On April 28, the ballot opened for the post of Queensland branch secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union. The candidates contesting the position are Brett Cardinal, a former Queensland AMWU organiser, running for Workers Unity, a militant rank-and-file group in the union, and acting state secretary Andrew Dettmer, who is supported by AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron.
Dettmer became acting state secretary in 2003 when the elected state secretary, Dave Harrison, resigned to contest preselection for a safe Labor Party seat.
According to Cardinal, at the time of the last election for state secretary four years ago, the Queensland AMWU branch had around 15,000 members. This year, financial membership is down to around 12,900.
Cardinal told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly that this membership decline can be turned around. "Why is membership at its lowest ever? It's quite simple. Workers look to the union and don't see it being active. They can't see why they should be paying their $7 a week for a union that in their mind does nothing. Workers want to see a union that's willing to have a go, to stand up to the boss and fight for their interests. Then they will rejoin."
Faced with rampant casualisation and labour hire in the industry in Queensland, Cardinal believes that the AMWU needs to give both casual and labour-hire workers a reason to join the union.
"I'm yet to find someone who doesn't know a bad story about a labour-hire worker being ripped off", he said. "The first thing we need to establish is that when labour-hire workers go into existing workshops where there is an industrial agreement in place, that they get paid the penalty rates on top of the shop rate. Currently, labour-hire companies pay the 25% loading on the award rate for a labour hire worker. That means that labour-hire workers are working in a factory on significantly less than the permanent workforce. If that situation continues, employers will start culling permanent jobs and replace them with labour-hire workers.
"Then we need to bring all labour hire workers together to get an industry-wide labour-hire agreement so that labour-hire workers get a reasonable pay, regardless of where they're working,. This is important because labour-hire workers' wages are continually fluctuating, making it hard to budget and to access loans because they can't predict their income."
Cardinal also believes that the union can convince more casual workers to join if it puts more effort into organising them. Currently, there is an award which says that a casual worker should be offered a permanent job after six months, but bosses often threaten casual workers with the sack if they ask for a permanent job after six months.
Pattern bargaining
"Workers Unity supports industry-wide campaigns and pattern bargaining", said Cardinal. "We've seen the damage from enterprise bargaining, where it's isolated workplaces."
The two attempts at pattern bargaining in Queensland in 2001 and 2003 delivered very little, he said. They flopped because of the way they were orchestrated — "lots of glossy leaflets and stickers were printed for the campaigns, but that's about all that was done". There were no mass meetings to discuss the campaigns.
"Workers Unity wants to see campaigning that involves the rank and file, not just in the campaign, but in the lead-up to the campaign. Rank and filers should have input via mass meetings as to what they want to fight for."
The lack of industry-wide mass meetings is damaging the union, said Cardinal. "Mass meetings have always been critical. In the current work environment, where we don't have big workplaces like ComEngineering employing 800-1000 workers, mass meetings are more important than ever. Now that we mainly have small workplaces of 10-40 employees, mass meetings are vital to break the isolation of and give workers a sense of their power."
With Queensland having the most decentralised population of any Australian state, Workers Unity is taking up issues affecting regional members of the AMWU.
Cardinal is very critical of the Queensland AMWU branch's decision to close its Townsville office. He argues that the decision will hasten a decline in union membership.
"Workers Unity believes that the Townsville office should be re-opened, so when workers have issues in their workplace, they can come into the local office rather than having to ring through to Brisbane."
Workers Unity has sought to air the grievances of different Â鶹´«Ã½ of the AMWU membership and suggest solutions. One such group is sugar industry workers.
"It's a tragedy that AMWU members and other workers in the sugar industry don't know if they're going to have a job next month or not. All we hear about in the media is the package for the farm owners and mill owners. But what about the workers?
"We have spoken to workers from mills through northern Queensland, and were astonished to hear that workers wanted the union to organise a community campaign to protect their jobs, but the call fell on deaf ears.
"It's only been since Workers Unity started to talk to [sugar industry] workers about what they could do that the union leadership decided that they had better get involved. It's a shame that the officials waited until the union election to take an interest in this issue."
Sugar industry
It is a stressful time for workers and their families when any workplace is facing redundancy and closure, said Cardinal, but it's particularly bad in rural communities such as the sugar towns where there might not be any other work available.
"Workers Unity is advocating a campaign to pressure the government and the mill owners to ensure that workers have access to training programs to gain other skills, access to jobs in other areas, and that relocation expenses will be paid. The workers also need immediate access to Centrelink and welfare payments if the mills close."
Workers Unity is also campaigning for the union to rebuild its workplace delegate system.
"In Queensland, there are a lot of workshops without a delegate", said Cardinal. He argued that this is because workers are not confident that if they take on delegate positions, the union will defend them if their employer victimises them.
"It is crucial for building activism on the job that the union defend to the hilt any activist or delegate who is targeted because of their union activity. Workers Unity's position is that if any member is dismissed, we will do whatever is necessary to have that person reinstated. It's not good enough to run off to the commission to seek four weeks' pay for someone who's lost their job. When we talk about defending workers, we're talking about getting their job back."
Union democracy
Workers Unity is also highlighting issues of union democracy. Currently, only three of the Queensland AMWU organisers are elected. Cardinal says that all officials should be elected and held accountable to the membership, as occurred prior to the 1990s.
"The issue goes right to the heart of democracy in the union", he said. "When an organiser is appointed, they are accountable to the state secretary, whereas when they are elected, they're accountable to the membership."
During the election campaign, Workers Unity discovered that Northern Territory AMWU members, who are considered part of the Queensland branch, don't have the right to vote for Queensland state secretary under the AMWU's rules. This is despite the fact that the Queensland state secretary appoints the NT organiser.
"This shows that there are serious issues regarding democracy in our union that need to be addressed", Cardinal argued. "Members in the NT should have the right to vote for a secretary of their choosing. Members need to be made aware that the union rules don't permit the NT members to vote, then those rules need to be changed."
The campaign material distributed by Andrew Dettmer's ticket has mostly been based on fear-mongering, trying to scare workers into not voting for the "extremist" Workers Unity ticket. While the union's policy supports refugees' rights and Dettmer claims to be left-wing, his election leaflet criticises Cardinal for supporting refugees' rights as well as for being a socialist.
Cardinal believes that Dettmer is running a negative campaign because the incumbents don't have any answers to problems facing the union. "Dettmer's leaflets are not putting forward any positive policies for the union", said Cardinal. "They're not addressing the issues of the rapidly declining membership, job losses or losses in pay or conditions."
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, May 5, 2004.
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