BY LESLIE RICHMOND
ADELAIDE — With the fate of five teachers forcibly transferred from Craigmore High School unresolved, there has been a disturbing silence from the Australian Education Union (AEU) in South Australia.
The removal of the five teachers on August 15, without explanation, by the Department of Education and Children's Services, is a serious attack on union activism. If successful, it will set a dangerous precedent that governments across the country would be only too willing to use. DECS has already flagged the possibility of further forced transfers.
DECS has given the five's history of workplace activism as a reason for the transfer. No complaints have been made against the teachers, and DECS has made it clear that the transfers are not a disciplinary action. The only reason for the action is that all five teachers are active unionists.
Immediately following the transfers, students organised rolling strikes — supported by parents, former and present staff — and the union sub-branch voted for a series of rolling stoppages until the teachers were reinstated. The branch also carried a motion requesting that the AEU inform all state sub-branches about issues and events at Craigmore, with a view to preparing for possible state-wide action.
However, the AEU leadership strongly advised the sub-branch against taking any industrial action — despite the clear support for such action within the community — and instead moved straight to a conference with DECS and seeking arbitration in the Industrial Relations Commission. The IRC advised against the stop works, and order that only DECS CEO Steve Marshall and AEU president Chris Waugh were able to publicly comment on the Craigmore matter. The five teachers involved were effectively gagged, unable to defend themselves.
Faced with no such limitation, the mass media has attacked the teachers, and much of the union's past actions, which limited the privatisation pursued by Liberal and Labor state governments under the guise of self-management for schools.
After seeking legal advice, the union implicitly acknowledged that conciliation through the IRC was unlikely to be successful, deciding to pursue the matter in the Supreme Court. However, the union did not immediately drop the IRC process, thereby extending the period of the gag and limiting AEU members' ability to take industrial action.
The AEU eventually walked out of the conciliation process and called a delegates meeting, three weeks after the transfers were imposed. The meeting, attended by more than 100 people, endorsed a call for the AEU to begin balloting members for state-wide, rolling one-hour stoppages to protest the use of section 15c of the education act (which enables forced transfers) against the Craigmore teachers.
The lack of resolution over the Craigmore issue is also having an impact on the upcoming AEU elections. Three of the teachers who were transferred — Nick Cava, Annette Chigros and Duncan Kennington — are contesting positions. Cava is running for vice-president.
According to Helen O'Connor, who is running for president on a ticket with Cava, Chigros, and Kennington, it is a grassroots campaign with limited resources, and DECS "could not have planned things better" to disrupt their campaign. "Much of our election effort has been sidetracked pretty successfully into the Craigmore stuff", she said.
The ticket argues that there is a lack of activism within the union. O'Connor says that they want to develop a more grassroots orientation for the union; to strengthen workplaces by increasing the level of training and confidence of union members, and increasing the levels of activism; to provide more organisers in worksites; and to recruit more young members.
The AEU's own recent history in SA — the successful strikes of the mid 1990s — shows that the only real defence of workers' rights and conditions is a strong union that is willing to take action. That is what the Craigmore five need now.
From Green Left Weekly, September 17, 2003.
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