Jailing a labour leader: intimidation
Corporate Australia recently showed its determination to further informalise labour.

On 27 August the Victorian Supreme Court of Appeal jailed Craig Johnston for nine months. By doing so, the court overturned Melbourne County Court’s suspended sentence of one year imprisonment in May this year.
The case began in 2001 when Johnson Tiles sacked 29 formal workers, contracting recruitment agency, Skilled Engineering, to replace them with casual workers. At the time Craig Johnston was the Victorian state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU); he and 17 labour activists damaged office and factory equipment during a protest against the tile company’s obvious move to casualise the workforce. The unionists had entered the premises of Johnson Tiles and Skilled Engineering, whose managers aggravated the situation by making the 29 informals cross a picket line outside the Johnson factory.

At the time of the incident the Australian media backed the companies’ case against the protesters, calling the protest a “run through”, which led to the ludicrous accusation of a “threat to kill”, though staff in both companies were unharmed. With no substantial evidence, newspapers described the protesters’ action as a “violent rampage” saying the unionists “stormed” the companies; clearly this language was intended to drum up public support against such “outrageous behaviour” by workers, convince the public that violence was in the minds of the demonstrators, and to prepare Australia for a sentence that is much harsher than befits the “crime”.
The AMWU National Council is going along with the media hysteria; AMWU national secretary Doug Cameron described Johnston’s tactics as “criminal” before the National Council expelled Johnston in absentia from the union on 21 July in what has been called a ‘kangaroo court’.

It is most likely that the actions by the courts and the AMWU leaders are an attempt to stifle workers’ attempts to organise within the union. Johnston was a member of the increasingly successful Workers First faction within the AMWU, composed of AMWU members who were dissatisfied with the union’s national leadership.