PADDY CRUMLIN is the Maritime Union of Australia assistant national secretary. He was interviewed for Green Left Weekly by ANA KAILIS and IGGY KIM.
Question: Where does the dispute go now, after the High Court decision and the return to work?
It creates further difficulties for us, because it's extraordinary that an insolvent company has been given the OK to work back to solvency. The people in charge of the company are insolvency experts with no experience or management skills in stevedoring, and it's a company that's been designed simply to strip assets and leave debt.
In this situation, ours was a tough decision. But it was the only one available, and it gets us through the gates.
The next stage is to expose the possible criminality — certainly the immorality — of what's been done and campaign and industrially agitate for these workers to be put back into the real company — the one that's doubling and tripling its profits every year.
We're seizing every opportunity to expose that conspiracy and reconstruct a strong position for the union and for the workers who wish to belong to it.
The struggle won't be over for a very long time, because it's clear that Chris Corrigan, Peter Reith, the federal government and the National Farmers' Federation will continue to conspire against our rights to unionise, to permanent employment and to equal pay for equal work.
Question: What's the likelihood of similar attacks on other working people?
The cynical and arrogant gutting of the company, the use of security guards and the very deep links in the planning between the government, the NFF and Chris Corrigan have now sunk in. The community generally is saying that there may be problems on the waterfront, but they're also asking that if this can happen to ordinary wage-earners with a very strong union behind them, then what security have they got?
That question's going to be continually asked until there's a sensible answer to it, and there don't seem to be too many of those coming out of John Howard! So, it's got to have the effect of re-combining the trade union movement and the broader community.
Question: Does the success of the community pickets and the Melbourne demonstration signify a new politicisation among workers?
Definitely. For a government and a rogue employer to put together such an outrageous operation aimed at working men and women demonstrates great confidence.
Also, we are now at a time of growing power for transnational capital. The technological revolution is continuing to break down and cut across domestic markets, replacing them with an international market. So all the pieces are in place for a drive by the employer class against the interests of working men and women. In a world of global competition, their fundamental objective is to drive down unit labour costs to increase profits, and the conditions are favourable for that.
However, people are increasingly aware of these enormous forces. They are aware, partly through this dispute, of the cynicism and arrogance of these forces and their absolute determination to twist, bend or even break laws to get their end. The situation still has to be articulated for people, but having understood it, there is no doubt there will be an enormous groundswell of opposition to it.
The same phenomena are seen in their everyday lives — less power over their education system, on the receiving end of a deteriorating medical system. If you're unemployed, your rights are systematically struck off one by one. Likewise if you are an Aboriginal person, if you're a woman, if you need access to child-care. Australians in every area of their lives are seeing their rights being undermined and systematically removed.
But you need a catalyst, and I believe the Patrick dispute has been a real catalyst. And because there will be other disputes — in the mines, in other unionised areas — average Australians will become more acutely aware of what is going on. So, yes, I think this is an absolutely fundamental turning point in that awareness and in the generation of opposition.
Question: What type of political outcome is needed to reflect this developing opposition?
We only have a two-party system in this county. Already it is fraying around the edges. Social democracy to a large extent failed the Australian worker, particularly at the end of their period in government.
They rejected the Labor Party because it didn't protect wages and social welfare. They didn't answer the basic needs of workers, like full employment.
Now we have had to go through the difficult process of dealing with a more conservative government with a much more strictly ideological approach to the free market and international capitalism. That is another hard lesson for the Australian people.
My view is that there needs to be more of an opportunity to generate a broad left position. Not a second social democratic position, but a genuine left position with an understanding of class struggle, the basic tenets of socialism and a scientific approach to developing human rights — social, cultural, sexual and racial justice.
Australia is a country with a long labour and progressive history, yet at present there is a vacuum. There is a great responsibility for left-thinking and progressive people to make further attempts to understand the climate under the new world order, to understand the enormous forces against the working class and assume some responsibility and leadership for regenerating a genuine left.
It hasn't been seen in this country since the breakup of the Communist Party in the late 1960s and 1970s. The pressures and dangers on working men and women are far greater, and yet the left doesn't seem to be responding adequately.
I'm for regenerating a new process of discussion and endeavour. Of course, there are going to be differences over a scientific approach to human development, but it's our responsibility to work constructively through these differences in a way that will develop a better position for the working class.
I am hopeful, just as Australians are now seeing these enormous forces which are endangering their basic rights, that the leadership of the working class can use this time to generate a process that will provide real leadership.