MUA election issues begin to surface
By Dick Nichols
Last week, seafarer members of the Maritime Union of Australia attending their monthly stop-work meeting were given the latest issue of Voice, the journal of the Maritime Unionists Socialist Activities Association (MUSAA). It clearly expresses the grounds on which the present MUA leadership will fight the forthcoming MUA elections.
In the journal's lead article, MUSAA national secretary and MUA deputy national secretary Paddy Crumlin warns that "decisions to vote based on emotional reaction or responsiveness to negative campaigns ... that do not clearly define and commit to well-developed strategies will expose the membership and the future of the union to great danger". Crumlin argues that the very survival of the union in the face of last year's onslaught by Patrick Stevedores and the Howard government "should not be underestimated or devalued in importance by any member ... Members should remember who developed the strategies and promoted them."
More generally, Crumlin says the union has had to struggle on a difficult battleground formed by the total deregulation of international shipping, aggressively anti-worker federal and state governments, increasingly confident maritime employers, the poaching activities of other unions and ongoing sectional differences within the MUA itself. Given this context, he says, it is difficult to imagine a better outcome than that achieved by the existing leadership over the past "difficult and at times traumatic" years.
In a more direct attack on the rank-and-file opposition tickets that will be contesting the election, Max Wood writes, "the group now organising the defeat of the 'old guard' is running on policies put forward by one or two aspiring candidates and followed by dejected and disgruntled members who have agreed to be called members of the WA MUA Rank and File Committee". He argues that under the present balance of class forces "we are in no situation at present to achieve the main individual objectives of this group's policies" and "we are stretched to defend the status quo".
Commenting on the National MUA Rank and File's initial 10-point policy, Wood says, "maybe the budding new leaders may try industrial action as a lever. After experiencing the exercise, and picking up the pieces, they may reflect on the merit of their rejection."
The central plank of the National Rank and File policy platform is union democracy and membership participation. Convener of the WA Rank and File, Chris Cain, told Green Left Weekly: "You never know what's possible in a given fight around policy until the membership is fully informed, fully in control of decision-making and feels it runs — and really does run — the union. That's the meaning of our whole campaign and our slogan 'Put U back in the Union'."
For Cain, the problem with the MUSAA argument is its acceptance of the present balance of forces between the maritime employers and the MUA as something fixed. Reflecting on his own experience as enterprise bargaining agreement delegate at King Bay (North-West Shelf), Cain said that forthcoming gains in the agreement presently being finalised with Woodside were due to rank-and-file control of the negotiating process, and his determination as their representative not to yield to management pressure.
Cain's leaflet to WA MUA members states: "We have had nothing to do with local officials during the last four years. And the members have made sure that the officials with whom we have dealt did what the rank and file wanted."
According to Cain, the second vital issue is having a leadership in which MUA members have confidence, and which will make them want to participate in rebuilding their union. To that end the WA MUA Rank and File has challenged the incumbent officials, Terry Buck, Wally Pritchard and Dean Summers, to debate the issues in front of MUA members.
In the words of their first election leaflet: "Of course, there are lots of policy issues in this election. We would like to debate the issues with our opponents before meetings of wharfies, seafarers and all other MUA members, so that they can work out which team they think will best represent them. However, honest, open debate is the last thing the existing officials want. Their approach has been to conduct a back-alley whispering campaign against the WA MUA Rank and File.
"Who hasn't been told Chris Cain is an agent of the TWU [Transport Workers Union], or that we'll have everyone out the gate at the drop of a hat, or that we're either 'Trotskyists', Liberal Party supporters or both?
"This rubbish simply shows how bankrupt the existing 'leadership' is. Without policy, contemptuous of union democracy but very keen to hang onto their jobs, they are reduced to throwing mud and hoping some of its sticks."
The debate in the next two weeks before the election opens is bound to be sharp. Interested Green Left Weekly readers can follow it day by day on the National MUA Rank and File web page at <http://www.angelfire.com/ma/rank/index.html> or e-mail: <mua-rank@hotmail.com>.
[Dick Nichols is the national industrial convener of the Democratic Socialist Party.]