'We need a bit of a blue'
The incumbent leadership of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) is in for a bit of a shock over the next few weeks. The militant Workers First team is contesting the position of national secretary, the first time it has been contested for 20 years, as well as standing candidates for Victorian state secretary and for one Victorian metal division organiser.
DARREN NELSON has been given the job of challenging the high-profile serving national secretary Doug Cameron. He spoke to Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly's ANNE O'CASEY about the campaign.
Question: How did you come to be involved in Workers First?
I'm like a fair proportion of the members of the union. I served an apprenticeship in the aircraft industry. I was a shop steward and a health and safety representative in aircraft factories in Port Melbourne.
I then became the health and safety officer, then the union needed assistants in educating shop stewards, so I did that. In 1993 I went over to participate in a campaign to get the South Australian state secretary elected. I played a variety of political roles within the organisation.
Then I had a falling out with the state and national leaderships because I didn't like the direction the union was going in. I had the audacity to make comments and criticisms so, when I was on holidays one year, the postie turned up with some registered mail — a letter terminating my employment with the union.
With Workers First's momentum building up, I became its campaign manager in 1998. That campaign toppled the old guard leadership in Victoria and I became an organiser when I was elected in 1998.
Question: Why was Workers First set up?
Workers First was set up in 1997 because there were a number of disillusioned officials in the union who were not happy with the direction that the leadership was taking it.
Basically, it started with a discussion over a couple of beers in the pub and just grew from there when other disaffected officials banded together. It then started to weld itself into a form of opposition to the incumbents.
Question: What has Workers First achieved in the 18 months to date?
In Victoria we've now got more officials and more regional officers, not only in the metropolitan areas but we've opened up an office in Shepparton and Portland so we can look after regional members in Victoria.
Nationally we've turned the union's direction around — the officials are responding to our agenda now because it's what the members actually want, not the rhetoric and the nonsense they've been putting up.
Question: Why have you decided to run in the elections?
We've made our decision to run because Cameron has shown that he'll use his power of veto over the states.
We made a decision on our committee of management last year to engage an industrial officer. Cameron overrode it nationally and put him on an individual, performance-based contract. Whatever Cameron doesn't want — which is pretty well everything we do — he'll use the national veto to knock off.
Question: What is your approach to enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs)?
We are trying to move away from EBAs — they've had their life. That's what we're trying to do with Campaign 2000 — get rid of EBAs so that we can exercise control. There should be an industry-wide settlement, and then Appendix A or Appendix B can deal with the specific sectors of an industry.
When I first came into the union we used to call it a "log of claims". We used to put a log of claims on the employer every 12 months at least. We might have wanted softer toilet paper, better coffee, more money, and various sorts of changes.
That was an active union, organising around issues on the job that members wanted — that's what trade unionism is about, not the show-bag unionism, not the corporate unionism that most Australian unions are into now.
Q: What has been the response of employers and the incumbent leadership to Campaign 2000 plan?
The employers, and particularly the Australian Industry Group, are sitting back and waiting to see who wins the election in the union. They don't want Campaign 2000. The incumbent national leadership doesn't want Campaign 2000. It was foisted on them by the membership, under the leadership of Workers First.
Members have had a gutful of enterprise bargaining agreements, they'd had a gutful of trade-offs and they wanted a change. So if Workers First is defeated, then I suggest that the union won't put too much effort into Campaign 2000. They'll let each site get picked off one by one.
Cameron has been in the Sydney Morning Herald talking about Labor keeping Australian Workplace Agreements and non-union agreements when they get into federal government. He's on the national executive of the ALP; he contributes to their industrial relations and their industry policy; he's the national secretary of a union — and here he is supporting individual contracts!
Question: Do you think there is a link between Campaign 2000 and the current election campaign?
There is a link. It's Members First which is running the industrial agenda of the branch — which is Campaign 2000. We had the biggest meetings in November last year that I have seen in the last 20 years. So the members want it. They are champing at the bit.
Cameron and Julius Roe [the unelected Cameron-installed state secretary in Victoria] talk about 65,000 jobs going in manufacturing. I want to know what they did — they just sat back in their ivory tower and let the jobs go. They didn't campaign around it. All they do is comment on it.
Question: What are some of your campaign policies?
We had an experience the other day at our committee of management when we had other divisions voting on the representatives of the metal division. We don't want to see people interfere in other divisions.
If the vehicle division wants to make decisions on how they best represent their members, then they are the experts and know the best way to deal with it.
We want divisions to have their own money — not Cameron or Roe holding the purse strings and if you are in political favour, you get a quid and if you're not, then you get starved.
That would force accountability — if they are out there looking after the industrial and political interests of their members, the income will come in because members will be happy.
But if they are sitting out on the footpath drinking cafe lattes all day then their membership will decline, their income will decline and they will have to be accountable. That is what we want — people who are accountable to the organisation.
Question: Where do you think the priorities of the union should lie?
I was at Trades Hall's Labour Day celebrations when [Trades Hall secretary] Leigh Hubbard got up and talked about all the great victories of the labour movement: everything from shorter hours to annual leave, sick leave, you name it. Any condition that workers have got came from industry-wide negotiations, agreements, action.
So if people say we are turning back the clock and it's Craig Johnson's [Workers First's candidate for Victorian state secretary] and Darren Nelson's Jurassic Park, I don't accept that.
Trade unionism is going into extinction the way we are operating now. We need to go back to organising on the job — having a bit of a dip and a blue about what members want, not what corporate Australia want. Then we'd see a healthy and prosperous trade union movement that is relevant and that is listened to.