BY SUE BOLTON
MELBOURNE — Fifteen Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) members and one Electrical Trades Union member appeared in the county court on July 21 and 22 over an industrial dispute involving Johnson Tiles and Skilled Engineering in 2001.
The committal hearings for the case, held in 2002, exposed the lack of evidence to justify the serious charges, which included aggravated burglary, riot, criminal damage, assault and affray. Accordingly, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) agreed, prior to the county court appearance, to drop all charges except for unlawful assembly against all but one of the unionists.
The DPP has refused to drop the extremely serious charges of threat to kill and criminal damage against former AMWU state secretary Craig Johnston.
While the others will be sentenced on July 30, Johnston has been committed to stand trial on May 10 next year. This targeting of Johnston is not surprising, given a continuing campaign by employers, the state Labor government, and the conservative national leadership of the AMWU to force Johnston out of the trade union movement.
The charges arise from an industrial dispute in 2001, when Johnson Tiles, a factory in the eastern suburb of Bayswater, unexpectedly sacked its maintenance workforce and outsourced the jobs to notorious labour-hire firm Skilled Engineering.
Skilled Engineering refused to hire all but two of the original workers, leaving 29 workers stuck without jobs. Some of these workers were in their 50s and had worked for Johnson Tiles for more than 25 years. They faced the prospect of never being able to find work again.
The picket line outside Johnson Tiles had been unsuccessful in preventing scab workers from entering the factory. So on June 15, the protest moved inside the Johnson Tiles factory and inside the Skilled Engineering headquarters at Box Hill.
Each spontaneous protest only lasted around 10 minutes. From the evidence presented in the court case, it is clear that no protester intended to hurt anyone or damage any property.
Immediately after, greatly exaggerated accounts of the protests and speculation about union officials' roles in the protest were published in the press. The press reports included photographs.
Many of the witnesses from Skilled Engineering and Johnson Tiles did not identify any individuals from the protest until after they had seen the prejudicial media reports of the events. Police used newspaper photographs to "help" the witnesses identify individuals. For this reason, county court judge Joe Galluci extended a suppression order preventing the publication of photographs of Craig Johnston in connection with this case.
Johnston's lawyer Robert Stary has made a formal complaint about popular television program The Secret Life of Us for airing two episodes which have a storyline based on the police version of events. Stary told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly that he regards this program as being in contempt of court, because "it was a crude attempt to contaminate the public's view of this case, directly or indirectly".
"As a general principle", Stary told GLW, "I don't think employers should revert to the court to resolve what are industrial disputes. To invoke the police in these sorts of disputes simply polarises people because the penalties and sanctions are so severe that they represent a complete over-reaction.
"It doesn't assist industrial harmony. It just polarises the parties and then you get civil injunctions and threats of financial repercussions against ordinary working people. It's just done as a form of sheer intimidation against unionists.
"The most regrettable feature of this case is that there are other trade unionists who have sought to align themselves with the employers by acting as informers. It is a complete lack of solidarity when you inform to the police and you divulge those sorts of things that should be kept within the confines of the union.
"I don't know whether political pressure was brought to bear on Johnson Tiles to bring charges, but I do know that the evidence was deficient. When they originally sought to charge them, it was pretty clear that they didn't have enough evidence. And because of that, they had to rely on the informer from inside the union to give them sufficient evidence to proceed, and the informer admitted that his legal costs were being paid for by the national office of the AMWU.
"I would think that the people from the national office of the AMWU have a lot to answer for, for their conduct."
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, July 30, 2003.
Visit the