Give John Howard the flick

John Howard (alias comedian Bart Rose) PHOTO: Zoe Reynolds

By National Secretary Paddy Crumlin

Who would put up with a bloke who tries to sack you every day for nine years, sends heavies with masks and dogs around to your house to kick your door down and throw you on the street, makes everything 10 per cent dearer to eat and drink, then when you're feeling crook about it makes it harder and more expensive to see a doctor. And if you get on a plane to get away from him, half the crazies in the world want to blow you up...

This is the Let's Give John Howard the Flick Maritime Workers' Journal. If anyone deserves it, he and his cronies do. It won't be easy, and we might not succeed, but we have to have a go or we won't be the union we should be.

Who would put up with a bloke who tries to sack you every day for nine years, sends heavies with masks and dogs around to your house to kick your door down and throw you on the street, makes everything 10 per cent dearer to eat and drink, then when you're feeling crook about it makes it harder and more expensive to see a doctor.

And if you get on a plane to get away from him, half the crazies in the world want to blow you up because this bloke's also joined a gang that's doing even worse to them -- the coalition of the willing.

Well, the MUA is a paid up member of the coalition of the unwilling to put up with his crap anymore. It's not long to go, so let's get out there and move him and his villains on.

Dark legacy

What a bunch of heroes! They knowingly continued making everything from the back dunny to the front fence from a substance that kills as sure as the sun rises in the east, and just happened to overlook telling everyone for a couple of decades -- especially all the workers who had anything to do with the rotten stuff. Then when they get pinged, they pack up and go to The Netherlands, leaving behind an empty beer can and a box of burnt matches.

Too many workers, wharfies and seafarers amongst them, have coughed their last out because of Hardie's callous indifference to their dark legacy. Too many families are left with nothing because in the world of the James Hardie, they account for nothing.

It's a sobering insight into where some in the business community want to take their workers. We've been pursuing justice for those workers with asbestos related diseases for a long, long time and hiding in Amsterdam won't stop us, or the Australian trade union movement, or global labour.

In the words of the head of the inquiry in Hardie, David Jackson, QC: "To put it directly, (Hardie) still has in its pockets the profits made by dealing in asbestos, and those profits are large enough to satisfy most, perhaps all, of the claims of victims of James Hardie asbestos."

Untiring work

It's the untiring work of the activists in our rank and file, our union officials, both in the branches and nationally, along with their families and friends, organising against Howard for a change in government that is opening the way for a Labor Government to address many of the abuses maritime workers have copped since the Liberal/National Party came to government.

It's a great union to be part of. It's a union that, for the most part, is more interested in doing than talking.

If every member puts in the same effort, change in our favour is only a matter of time.

In this last week, let's lift and drive hard.

Proud to be Union.