Liz Ross

OBITUARY

John Cummins, 1948-2006

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win! If You Don't Fight, You Lose!

Just as we'd stopped the city for John 'Cummo' Cummins in 1986, after his jailing in the battle for the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF), we stopped it again 20 years later, to mark his death.

John Cummins, 26.08.1948 – 29.08.2006
President, Construction Division, Victorian Branch, CFMEU

Photo courtesy of the CFMEU

Fists raised, we marched from the heritage-listed and BLF protected Regent Theatre, where around 3,000 had joined a celebration of his life, and whatever our political differences, a celebration of our common fight. We passed the City Baths and Mac's Hotel, while around the corner were Tasma Terrace and the Queen Victoria Markets, all saved from the wrecker's ball by BLs during the 1970s and 1980s. Marching on past all the new buildings in the city going up with union labour, we followed the hearse to Trades Hall. There, many more told stories of John's life — from the CFMEU office staff to long time friends such as Len Hartnett and BLF colleagues, including former South Australian BLF leader Ron Owens.

What a fighter we've lost! Cummo's death marks the end of an era in Australia — the era where unionists were schooled in socialist politics, as well as industrial action. In John's student days at LaTrobe University he joined the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) and threw himself into the anti-Vietnam war and Worker-Student Movements. This political training, taught him the need for the political and industrial fight.

While Cummo qualified as a teacher, the radical politics of the day and the experience of holiday jobs on building sites turned him to blue collar industrial work, joining and later becoming a leader of one of the country's most militant unions, the BLF. The BLs membership, like that of the equally militant Waterside Workers Federation, was well schooled in industrial — and political — struggle. Coming up through the ranks, Cummo worked a range of jobs from the Northcote Brickworks to the Westgate Bridge, before becoming an organiser in the Pilbara, then returning to Melbourne.

As current CFMEU state President Ralph Edwards wrote about this time in Western Australia: 'It was a wild time in the west, during the previous big minerals boom', putting the then young organiser under extreme pressure, 'but he thrived under the challenge'. Coming back to Melbourne's CBD, Cummo led the Federation's fight for better wages and conditions, safety and workers' compensation, gains that spread throughout the industry and wider society. From the Melbourne Underground to Collins Place, from 417 St Kilda Road to WorkCover disputes, Cummo was always there. And as even his most bitter opponents acknowledged, they rarely won a blue against such a fierce advocate for his cause

Throughout it all Cummo always acknowledged that it was the members' courage and fighting ability that was the union's strength: that was his inspiration. Also an inspiration was John's family. Di, his partner a staunch political comrade and sons Shane and Mick, political supporters and sharers of his other lifelong passion — Aussie Rules and the Fitzroy team (now Brisbane Lions).

In the 1980s, when the BLs were threatened with, and then deregistered by Labor governments, the ACTU and many unions, including the rival Building Workers Industrial Union (BWIU), Cummo never wavered. For the principle of defending the rights of workers, John was arrested and jailed time after time. Not heroics, though definitely a courageous and principled stand by a union leader doing his job.

Standing up for his principles, prepared for jail any time, Cummo was facing all this again as the CFMEU was under attack from WorkChoices and the special building industry legislation. The ruling class never let up its pursuit. Till the day he died, Cummo was facing charges from Howard's ABCC, the same body that's going after the 107 building workers in Perth.

In his tribute, the CFMEU's Ralph Edwards said that the ABCC 'wanted the family and the union to make a declaration he was not going to fight'. But Ralph added, 'John Cummins, you have taught us lots of things. Most of all you taught us the willingness, the ability to fight. Make no mistake, we'll fight'.

The CFMEU became John's union when, after a political fight within the BLF, he led the BLs into amalgamation with the CFMEU in 1994. For the first time in Australian history, building and construction workers were in the one union.

It wasn't just for his own union that Cummo took a stand. As the hundreds of tributes flowing into the papers after his death testify, from the waterfront MUA dispute to textile workers, from anti-war — in Workers against the War in 2003, East Timor solidarity — to Indigenous Rights, whatever the cause, he and the union were there.

It's this legacy that building worker Tawa, a passionate rank-and-file unionist himself, told me he wants to carry on. 'I am very excited to be of this day and age. It is now our turn to pick up the mantle of responsibility and to march forward in to the future and to not let the sacrifice of yesteryears be for nothing.'

And as we marched through Melbourne's streets behind Cummo's coffin, I saw something I will never forget, a real sign that this tradition of working class struggle will carry on. Standing silently on the side of the road as we went by, were a group of school kids in town for the day — fists raised in the air.

Liz Ross has been a campaigner for women's and gay liberation from 1972, active in socialist groups since the late 1970s and is now in Socialist Alternative. She is a long time activist for union rights. Her history of the 1986 Victorian Nurses strike is in Rebel Women in Australian Working Class History. In 2004 John Cummins launched her book Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win! Builders Labourers Fight Deregistration, 1981-94. Liz has an article about the latest building industry legislation in Journal of Australian Political Economy, December 2005.
<ljr47@bigpond.com>

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.