Doug Cameron rides roughshod over AMWU members

BY SUE BOLTON

MELBOURNE — Showing breathtaking disregard for the wishes of his Victorian members, national secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Doug Cameron convened a telephone hook-up of AMWU national council members on May 10 to overturn a decision made by the Victorian AMWU state council on May 8.

At its state conference on April 22-23, the Victorian AMWU voted to stop its membership of the ALP for six months by withholding ALP affiliation fees and to decide whether to disaffiliate from the ALP at a December conference.

After this decision, some ALP members who were also AMWU officials, including Cameron, maintained that the suspension of ALP affiliation fees made no difference and that a delegation from the Victorian AMWU had to attend the state ALP conference on May 18-19.

The Victorian state council thus decided to clarify the issue, directing that there be no "metals" delegation (which would normally cover all divisions of the union except vehicle and printing) to the state ALP conference. This decision, made to ensure that the spirit of the AMWU state conference was fully implemented, is being challenged by Cameron.

The AMWU normally gets 50 delegates to state conference, 33 of whom make up the metals delegation, and 17 the printing/vehicle delegation. Because the vehicle division boycotted the Victorian AMWU state conference, the decision not to send a metals delegation to the ALP conference does not apply to it.

According to a report in the May 11 Weekend Australian, some AMWU members are arguing that a full contingent of AMWU delegates is necessary at the Victorian ALP conference in order to stop the right-wing Australian Workers Union leader Bill Shorten from winning the Victorian ALP presidency.

In voting to overturn the Victorian council decision, the national council authorised Cameron and Victorian president John Speight to select the metals delegates for the ALP conference. It is likely that some of the selected delegates may be neither members of the AMWU nor Victorians.

Victorian AMWU state secretary Craig Johnston disputes that the national council has the right to send delegates to the ALP state conference on behalf of the Victorian branch of the union. He sought an injunction from the federal court to stop it happening, but the application was rejected by the federal court on May 16.

From Green Left Weekly, May 22, 2002.

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From GLW issue 493