Support the right to organise

June 7, 2000
Issue 

Support the right to organise

On May 29, the Federal Court fined two union officials $20,000 each for refusing to apologise to the court after being found guilty of contempt.

The court had earlier found Dean Mighell and Craig Johnston, both executive members of the Metal Trades Federation of Unions (MTFU), guilty of contempt of court for ignoring an order forbidding them from holding mass meetings of union members.

The meetings had been called to allow workers to discuss and vote on the MTFU's Campaign 2000, an industry-wide agreement that would set uniform improvements in workers' wages and conditions across Victoria's manufacturing industry. Under the federal Coalition government's draconian Workplace Relations Act, mass meetings of union members to plan industrial action are illegal if they are held outside the officially sanctioned enterprise bargaining period.

The May 29 Federal Court ruling sets an alarming precedent. Courts' preparedness to fine (and/or jail) union officials for the "crime" of speaking to their members places another hurdle on the path of organising workers to defend their right to decent jobs, wages and working conditions.

Johnston and Mighell are refusing to accept the court's "justice" and have said they will not pay the fines. Fearful that the jailing of the two unionists could spark a mass campaign demanding their release, Justice Merkel ruled out the option of imprisonment, instead directing civil action to recover the fines.

Johnston and Mighell's courageous stand has provoked outrage from the capitalist media. The Melbourne Age editorialised on May 30 that Johnston and Mighell should "pay their fines and get on with the job". The newspaper added, "Persisting in their defiance will not help them, or the union movement generally, to succeed in changing [existing workplace] law".

This is patently untrue. It is only when workers and their leaderships defy the laws stacked in the bosses' favour that the workers' movement can make gains. When unions mobilised their members to support the Maritime Union of Australia on the wharves in 1998, in defiance of the Workplace Relations Act, John Howard and Peter Reith's laws were temporarily rendered paper tigers.

Mighell and Johnston's defiant stand must be supported — actively and without qualification — by the trade union movement. For so long as the bosses, their parliaments and their courts impose anti-worker laws, workers will have to break those laws in order to defend themselves.

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