According to retired bricklayer Albie Bambridge, "Craig was the first metalworker organiser I trusted". The following is his story.
I first met Craig in about 1993 or 94 when I was working at the bottle works in Spotswood. We were doing a complete rebuild because the place was very old. It was that old that there was a gun tower to overlook the Yarra River to catch the Russians in case they came up the river.
I had worked in these bottle works and glassworks all my life but I'd never seen safety as bad as it was in the old buildings.
The electrical stuff was not up to scratch. There was conduit that was rotten. There'd been things added on and taken away and no real plan. The electricians expressed alarm at some of the old pipe work. Then they discovered live wires, so we stopped work.
There was no organiser on site but all the blokes got together and said "we're not going back to work until we have the safety fixed up".
This happened on a Thursday afternoon. By the time we came back on the Monday we had our organisers there. We had a mass meeting and decided that we would only go back to work on certain conditions. These conditions were eventually met by management.
After it was all over, I said to Craig: "Well there you go mate, that was the first time that I ever had anything to do with metalworkers and we've won." He said: "You're being a bit hard aren't you?" I said: "Well previously, the metalworkers have sold me out a lot of times."
From then on, I ran into Craig quite often. We were very lucky down there. We had Dean Mighell from the electricians [union] just starting as an organiser. We had Johnny Setka from the CFMEU [Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union] and we had Craig. It was a real good team because they were a little bit left so we were able to have a significant victory over Baulderstone Hornibrook. I believe that when we went back to work, the dispute had cost the company $3 million and they sacked their boss.
The jailing of unionists is something that shouldn't happen. Perhaps Craig was a little bit enthusiastic in the dispute at Skilled [Engineering], but still, there was no damage done to anything other than property. Now property can be replaced. But nine months in jail for doing something that any organiser should do [defending jobs] is beyond me.
Craig's only the tip of the iceberg. If they maintain this jail sentence, it's a precedent. And who knows, it could happen to any of us, especially in the political climate of today. Even though I'm retired, I'm still going to keep on doing what I can. If I can fight I will.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, November 24, 2004.
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