Workers First sweeps AMWU elections
By Chris Spindler
MELBOURNE — The Workers First team in the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union elections won positions in Victoria won by significant margins.
Frank Fairley was elected state secretary; Craig Johnstone, assistant state secretary-metals division; Mark Light, organiser division 1 (Ballarat); and Bronwyn Halfpenny, regional assistant secretary in the food preservers and confectioners division.
Don Calderwood, standing for national organiser, won a majority of votes in Victoria but lost the position on the national vote.
Voter turnout increased by 5-6% on previous AMWU elections, reflecting the heightened interest in the issues raised in the campaign.
The final results were:
Victorian state secretary: Frank Fairley with 56.8% defeated John Corsetti with 43.2%.
Assistant state secretary-metals division: Craig Johnstone with 60.98% defeated Laurie Phelan with 39.02%.
Organiser division 1 (Ballarat): Mark Light with 54.5% defeated John Verner with 45.5%.
Regional assistant secretary, food preservers and confectioners division: Bronwyn Halfpenny with 52.3% defeated Romina Beitseen with 47.7%.
On May 19, as it became clear that Workers First had won, a large crowd gathered at the team's Newport office for the first in a line of victory celebrations. The crowd reflected a diverse range of AMWU members, other union members and supporters.
In speeches that followed, Craig Johnstone made it clear that rank and file support for Workers First's campaign made the difference.
Only with the determined support of many union members was it possible for the team to phone and visit as many as 20,000 union members during the campaign, Johnstone said.
Johnstone told Green Left Weekly that Workers First won "because we ran on the issues. We didn't go in for the personal attacks on our opponents. We ran on what people were upset about and put forward a positive campaign telling members what we were going to do."
Johnstone said Workers First candidates are well known and have credibility. Workers First's leaflets detailed its candidates' industrial experience and the issues they were running on, such as better union contact with members via a 24-hour help line, the selling of the union's CBD office to fund more offices in the metropolitan and rural areas and to fund more organisers.
Worker First is pledged to oppose the destruction of industry awards and to move away from enterprise bargaining, back to industry-wide campaigns to stop the undermining of the award workplace by workplace. Award provisions presently under threat include penalty rates on weekends, weekly or fortnightly pay, job conditions such as hot water and lunch areas, and rights to union representation on the job.
Another theme in the Workers First campaign was the need to change the union's culture with more membership involvement through more report-back meetings, better training for shop stewards, no "outside" interference, greater unity within the union ($2 million has been spent in the last two years in internal legal disputes) and greater respect for the independence of each division of the AMWU.
As Johnstone explained to Green Left Weekly: "There are different cultures of managing industrial disputes in different divisions. In the metal division, we are much more interested in settling accounts on the job, rather than in the arbitration commission. We need to get back to a culture that activates our members to settle things on the shop floor. We only go to the commission when things cannot be settled or the workers don't want a blue.
"This is a bit different to some of the other divisions, but we won't try to impose our culture on them. We have no intention of swallowing up other divisions. We hope there will be a close working relationship, not domination."
The most important goal of the Workers First leaders, Johnstone added, was to allow "more rank and file militants to have a say in the union".
Johnstone said that despite the team's success, "Workers First will continue to meet as a collective to discuss the direction we think the union should go in, how to win the campaign to defend award conditions, and build solidarity with the MUA."
Workers First's wins provide a "great lead for other rank and file union activists" Johnstone said. It was believed that the "left" leaders of the AMWU could never be toppled.
"And it wasn't some right-wing opportunist outfit trying to take it over — it was rank and filers. Our win will encourage rank and file militants to challenge union officials to do better."
The AMWU should be very involved in issues such as opposition to the toxic waste dump in Werribee, solidarity with the Indonesian democracy movement and the campaign against Jabiluka uranium mine, Johnstone said, but first "We've got to get the members' confidence back, so they see the union as more relevant to their day to day concerns. Then they will be more interested in other issues as well."