Tim Gooden
It's absolutely critical that there is a serious campaign to free former Victorian secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Craig Johnston from jail. This is not just because Craig is a nice bloke who's done a lot of good things for fellow workers and doesn't deserve to be in jail for nine months.
By jailing Craig, the government and big business are testing out the tactic of criminalising and jailing our trade union leaders. Now if they think this tactic is going to be successful, they will try it again on other union leaders.
That's why it's absolutely essential that the union movement as a whole organises a campaign for the release of Craig. The campaign has two purposes: To have Craig released from jail and to send a message to the government and the bosses not to jail our union leaders.
In addition, because the federal election resulted in a Coalition victory, we will need to defend and utilise our best trade union leaders in the upcoming battles with PM John Howard's government. Craig could be instrumental to leading these campaigns and of course the Howard government knows that. We need to get Craig and others back into the campaign in order to defend workers' rights.
The success of the Free Craig Johnston Campaign will also have an impact on the general fightback against the Howard government. If the Howard government sees a strong response from unions against the jailing of Craig, they will be less likely to go hard on the new industrial relations laws. However, if the federal government only sees a weak response from the trade union movement to the jailing of Craig, then they're likely to draft even harsher industrial relations laws than the ones that are before the Senate now.
We need to knock the wind out of the Howard government's sails, and we can do that by building a successful campaign to free Craig.
If miners were prepared 150 years ago to defend Eureka Stockade leader Peter Lalor, and if workers today are celebrating this anniversary and workers' freedom, then it follow that the Free Craig Johnston campaign is what we need to galvanise workers around, to take on the Howard government next year.
For the last 20 years, many activists, particularly in the trade union movement, have relied on the tactic of lobbying the Senate to change laws or defend our rights. With the Coalition winning control of the Senate, the lobbying tactic will have no chance of success.
However, the Menzies and Fraser governments controlled the Senate, and the trade union movement at the time made many gains despite that. The tactics relied on by the union movement and other social movements were large street campaigns and large industrial campaigns that put real political pressure on governments, regardless of whether they were Liberal or Labor.
Now the Free Craig Johnston Campaign will require not just one, but several rallies. And we'll need to protest, not just at parliament house but everywhere that Victorian Labor Premier Steve Bracks goes. Everywhere he goes, we need to be there putting direct pressure on his government. If they don't like it, that's too bad, because it was the Bracks government that waged a political campaign against Craig, which resulted in the Appeals Court judges jailing him. It was the Bracks Labor government that did this, not Howard — although Howard is trying to take advantage of the Bracks government's actions to have a go at all militant unionists.
We need to campaign directly against the attacks to make the government feel the heat. If we do anything less than that, the Bracks government will think that they can continue on their merry way, attacking unions and union leaders with no political cost.
The Free Craig Johnston Campaign needs to be part of the overall fight for trade unions to have the right to defend their members against attacks from both federal and state governments, regardless of whether Liberal or Labor is in power.
[Tim Gooden is assistant secretary of the Geelong Trades and Labour Council and was a Socialist Alliance candidate in the federal election.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, October 27, 2004.
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