BY MELANIE SJOBERG
"Balaclava-clad hoons", "busted-up offices", "terrorised staff", "union officials arrested" — these are the lurid makings of a corporate media scare campaign against the leaders of the militant Victorian branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.
The allegations centre on a June 15 raid on the Melbourne offices of labour hire firm Skilled Engineering by a group of people wearing balaclavas and a similar raid later that day on Johnson Tiles, in the city's outer-eastern suburbs.
Johnson Tiles sacked 29 maintenance workers in May, leaving them and their families with neither income nor security.
The company told the workers their jobs no longer existed — and then promptly brought in Skilled, whose replacement contract maintenance workers took over immediately. Such a practice has become common under the Coalition's Workplace Relations Act; labour fire companies usually pay lower rates and their workers are casual or contract.
The workers' union, the AMWU, established a peaceful picket to protest and is campaigning hard to get their members' jobs back.
Police have since charged six AMWU officials, including state secretary Craig Johnston and state president John Speight, with "riot, affray, aggravated burglary and criminal damage" in relation to the attack on Skilled Engineering. No charges have been laid in connection to the Johnson Tiles raid.
The union denies the allegations, its lawyers stating "There is no concrete evidence that any of the accused persons has been involved in this offence".
While the charges have been presented through formal court proceedings, a committal hearing will not occur until October 12.
Media on rampage
Despite Australian criminal law basing itself on the presumption that someone is innocent until proven guilty, the establishment media has sought to whip up a frenzy about the case.
"Wild rampage" said the July 11 Australian, "ruckus and rampage" said the July 10 Age, "rampage that terrified workers", said the July 7 and July 9 Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax industrial editor Brad Norrington described Craig Johnston as "ultra-militant" and implied his connection to the "balaclaca-clad mob".
There is widespread support for Johnston, Speight and the Victorian AMWU in union circles.
The Electrical Trades Union's Victorian state secretary, Dean Mighell, has openly endorsed Johnston's leadership and union activism and is leading the efforts to widen support. He has sought meetings with the ACTU and state ALP government in an effort to bring some sense to the situation.
Mighell told the ABC 7.30 Report on July 11 that "There's been a lot of hype about [the attack on Skilled] and I think a lot of people want to take Craig Johnston out, but he's been a very effective trade unionist in representing his members".
Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Leigh Hubbard has also not shied away from backing the Victorian AMWU, saying Johnston always showed "a great deal of dedication" to workers' rights.
Hubbard told the Age on July 14 that the use of "union run-throughs', meaning disrupting a company activity or the stopping of workers, could be supported in some circumstances.
While, in general, the union movement should refrain from acts of aggression, he said, the merits of specific industrial disputes had to be taken into account and, when workers' livelihoods were at stake, struggles would be intense.
On Mighell's initiative, the Victorian Trades Hall Council's executive passed a motion of support on July 13 for the unionists charged, and condemned Skilled Engineering for using non-union labour to replace the workers at Johnson Tiles.
However, more moderate sections of the union movement have not been so forthcoming.
AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron has not offered any words of support for Johnston or the other charged officials, instead telling journalists he has a "clear and unequivocal view that I don't support any of the alleged conduct".
Similarly ACTU secretary Greg Combet has rejected a request to intervene and publicly condemned the "use of violence" — prompting Mighell to describe him as an "academic" union leader.
Long vendetta
For the corporate media, the police charges are a tailor-made opportunity to continue a long vendetta against Johnston and the militant leadership of the Victorian AMWU, which, in their eyes, has been far too effective in fighting for its members.
Attacks on the Victorian AMWU and the Workers First caucus which currently controls it are nothing new. Employers, and their media mouthpieces, have long feared what would happen if the Workers First team succeeded in extending its militant, ground-up brand of unionism to the whole labour movement.
The Australian Financial Review began its latest crusade in February last year, with a series of fearful articles on Victoria's industrial landscape and the threat of increased union militancy. The Australian agreed, spitting venom at union tactics it described as "investment-curdling" and a "return to the bad old days".
This campaign started before Workers First had even assumed office — Johnston was elected the state secretary of the union's metals division in 1998, and of the whole state branch in May 2000.
During the union's most recent state election campaign, corporate media outlets sought to portray the contest between Johnston and Doug Cameron protege Julius Roe as one between old-fashioned industrial muscle and sophisticated, responsible unionism.
In the hands of the Sunday Age, Roe became the smart union visionary, a student radical who'd been black-banned by the Liberal government, and who supports militant action but also thinks "there are often more sophisticated ways of going about it". Craig Johnston, in contrast, was the tough kid who didn't do well in school, ended up in the metal industry and didn't answer the Sunday Age's questions nicely enough.
Workers themselves, however, have nothing to fear from a more democratic, militant and participatory unionism. The best example of Workers First's approach since taking over in Victoria has been its Campaign 2000, an attempt to replace shop-by-shop enterprise bargaining with industry-wide "pattern bargaining".
Not only has Campaign 2000 bucked the industrial trend of unions taking the negotiations framework which is given to them by employers and governments, but, because it has been discussed and endorsed by union mass meetings, its democratic character has also generated considerable enthusiasm amongst the AMWU rank-and-file.
The pattern bargaining approach has now spread to the rest of the AMWU and is being considered by other unions for future negotiations.
The bosses were so concerned at the time that they joined the push by then federal workplace relations minister Peter Reith to draw up legislation outlawing "pattern" bargaining. The draft law was unsuccessful.
Workers First's determination to rebuild a democratic fighting union was evident when Johnston, along with Mighell and the Australian Workers Union's Cesar Melham, coordinated mass meetings of union members to discuss Campaign 2000, in defiance of a directive from the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
The union officials were subsequently found guilty of contempt in the Federal Court. The three said that they'd rather go to jail than pay the fines imposed, a defiance which harks back to the days when unions were willing to challenge unjust anti-union laws rather than cop them.
An official of the employers' Australian Industry Group offered to get the contempt charges against Johnston dropped if he agreed to pull out of Campaign 2000 negotiations and let the AMWU's national officers establish a "shell agreement", with the detail left until later. Johnston and Workers First condemned the manoeuvre.
It has taken more than 12 months for the fines to be paid, with Johnston holding out longest against the anti-union laws.
No wonder business leaders, media moguls and Labor and Liberal politicians are worried. This is an entirely different kind of unionism to what they want to see: this kind is militant rather than pliant, democratic rather than top-down and it won't buckle at the first sign of trouble.
Nor is it just in the sphere of industrial tactics that the Victorian AMWU has sought to break the mould.
The union has strongly supported events such as International Women's Day, and has been an outspoken supporter of the global anti-corporate movement, backing the S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum and the M1 blockade of the Australian Stock Exchange.
The Victorian AMWU has also stood apart from the cosy relationship that many unions have with the ALP. Johnston is one of the few senior union leaders who is not even a member of the Labor Party, but has rather offered his support to the newly-formed Socialist Alliance.
All this has the employers shaking in their boots — the media frenzy about "violence" is an attempt to prevent the rejuvenation of militant, collective workers' struggle.
[Melanie Sjoberg is the national trade union coordinator for the Democratic Socialist Party.]