Paddy Crumlin’s long reign at the MUA has needed him to act as a Bonaparte, balancing different factions. That his appointed replacement comes from neither of the main factions is no surprise, but can Jake Field maintain the balancing act? Bob Sparks investigates.
Long-serving Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) leader Paddy Crumlin is set to step down as MUA National Secretary and hand over the reins to acting Assistant National Secretary Jake Field. This succession plan is being pitched to MUA members as “generational leadership change”. But MUA members would right to ask: who is Jake Field? And will they get a say in this “generational change”? And what is the state of the union that Crumlin is about to hand over?
When he faces re-election as National Secretary in 2027 after nearly two years’ incumbency, it will be just the second time Jake Field has sought the support of the membership to hold MUA office, the last time being in 2003.
Crumlin will step down as MUA National Secretary in February 2026 as one of the longest-serving leaders of any Australian maritime union. His 25 years in the top job surpasses Communist Jim Healy’s time as leader of the Waterside Workers Federation and is second only to the 37 years that Communist E.V. Elliott spent at the helm of the Seamen’s Union of Australia.
Crumlin’s decision to step down as MUA National Secretary comes as no surprise. It has been on the cards since the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) voted at its Congress in October 2024 to re-elect Crumlin as ITF President and to allow Belgian Transport Workers’ Union (BTB-ABVV) leader Frank Moreels to take over as ITF President in January 2027. However, Crumlin will continue to work in what the MUA describes as a “senior management capacity” on issues such as “workers’ capital” (i.e. superannuation) and international solidarity for “as long as required” by the union’s National Council.
Despite all this, Crumlin decision to step down comes at the same time a cloud hangs over the governance of the ITF, of which he has been the President of since 2010. The ITF has in recent months announced a restructure that includes getting rid of 25 percent of its staff (around 50 jobs), which has pushed the ITF Staff Union into taking strike action. More shocking are the accusations levelled at ITF General Secretary Stephen Cotton of repeated sexual harassment of ITF staff and of heading up a “sexist boys club”. Some have reportedly even labelled Cotton the “Harvey Weinstein of the labour movement”. The British Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union and others are now calling for Cotton’s immediate suspension from the ITF. Crumlin has been ITF President throughout these events.
Crumlin’s decision to step down as MUA leader might not be a surprise, but the choice of Jake Field to replace him is. Of all the current MUA National Council members, Field has some of the least time in the saddle as an elected MUA official. Field first ran for office in the MUA Quadrennial elections of 2003 and was elected to the union’s South Australia Deputy Branch Secretary position. After serving out his four-year term, he did not stand for re-election in 2007. Neither did he stand for any elected MUA position in the four Quadrennial elections since.
By 2017 Field had relocated to Newcastle where he established the HEADLines Initiative, a “peer support network for Maritime Workers, by Maritime Workers”. Then in late 2019 he was hired by the MUA as a National Health, Safety and Training Officer. After several years in that role, he was appointed in October 2024 to the Newcastle Deputy Branch Secretary position left vacant by the retirement of Dennis Outram. In the last few months, he was appointed acting National Assistant Secretary where he heads up the MUA’s fight against plans by DP World to automate its four local container terminals.
The Australian Financial Review (AFR) describes Field’s appointment to MUA National Secretary as “an unusual move”. Unusual or not, what the appointment of Field does is sidestep the two main forces within the MUA that Crumlin has been balancing between for years, the “Rank and File” forces from the union’s Western Australia branch on the one hand and what remains of his longer-term Communist Party of Australia (CPA) allies on the other.
Cain’s WA ‘insurgents’
The “Rank and File” forces led by Christy Cain first won control of the Western Australian branch of the MUA in 2003. In doing so, these insurgents deposed tame-cat officials belonging to Crumlin’s original powerbase, the Maritime Unionist Socialist Activities Association (MUSAA). The group was formed in 1983 and combined its Stalinist origins with support for the ALP’s class-collaborationist ‘Prices and Incomes Accord’. MUSAA served primarily as an election vehicle for “Marxist” trade union bureaucrats for well over two decades, but has long since disappeared with most of its members joining the Labor Party and a handful finding their way into the CPA.
The MUA Western Australia branch under its “Rank and File” leadership soon became a force to be reckoned with. A combination of militant industrial tactics and a boom in the offshore oil and gas industry saw MUA WA branch numbers climb from 1200 members in 2003 to a peak of over 3600 less than a decade later. Even today, its 2600 members still make it the biggest branch of the MUA, eclipsing the traditionally largest branches of Sydney and Victoria.
For years the relationship between the WA “Rank and File” insurgents and Crumlin was frosty. But it became warmer as time moved on and Crumlin worked to turn foe into friend. From 2009 WA MUA officials began to be appointed to national office positions. Both Ian Bray and Will Tracey have previously held national leadership positions and Adrian Evans occupies one of the two Assistant National Secretary spots today. The convergence between the two camps was capped off by the appointment of long-running MUA WA Branch Secretary Christy Cain as National Secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU) in March 2022.
CPA influence on the long decline
Compared to the WA “Rank and File” team, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) has not fared nearly as well. For decades the CPA – known as the Socialist Party of Australia until 1996 – was Crumlin’s traditional ally and even struck up a formal, long-running MUSAA-CPA alliance way back in 1997. But the CPA has only ever been the junior partner in this alliance. The CPA has never seriously stepped beyond the bounds of what is acceptable to Crumlin and has never acted as a real independent political force to galvanise union militants. This has only been to the group’s detriment.
The CPA’s traditional waterfront stronghold has been the MUA’s Sydney Branch, but the party is slowly losing its grip even there. From the time the MUA was formed in 1993, the MUA Sydney Branch Secretary position has been regularly held by a CPA member: Jim Donovan (1993-1998), Warren Smith (2007-2009), Paul McAleer (2009-2021) and Paul Keating (“Keato”, 2021-today).
Warren Smith was first appointed to national office in 2009 and the CPA even held three of the four elected positions in the MUA Sydney Branch from 2011 to 2019. But these have proved to be hollow victories. Over the years, the CPA’s capturing of official positions has become ever more divorced from any support for Marxism and a class-struggle outlook within the ranks of the union beyond speechifying at rallies.
This became apparent in the 2019 Quadrennial elections when, for the first time in over a decade, Sydney Branch officials ran separate tickets against one another and the candidates of the CPA-led “United Sydney Branch” ticket were thrashed by a margin of 2 to 1. Today the CPA has just two MUA officials, Sydney Branch Secretary Paul Keating and Deputy National Secretary Warren Smith. But these official positions are mere outliers, a reflection of a bygone era and not an indication of any serious Marxist influence within the MUA today.
Crumlin’s balancing act
For years Paddy has balanced between the “Rank and File” forces from WA and his traditional CPA allies, and the choice of Jake Field as MUA National Secretary helps to maintain that balance. Logically, CPA member and Deputy National Secretary Warren Smith should have been next in line for the top job. But Crumlin was never willingly going to hand it over to a member of the CPA. The early years of animosity between Crumlin and the WA “Rank and File” made the appointment of one of their number unlikely, too. Appointing Field to the MUA National Secretary position is therefore not as “unusual” as it looks on the surface.
Crumlin’s time at the top of the MUA has seen him cultivate a strong relationship with Labor PM Anthony Albanese, all in the hope of encouraging Labor governments to implement shipping reform. Between 2008 and 2024, Albanese has been a keynote speaker at each of the last five MUA National Conferences and addressed numerous MUA National Council meetings over the years. Yet the meagre shipping reforms that have been implemented have done little to stop the decimation of the Australian merchant fleet. Crumlin’s 25 years at the top have seen the number of Australian-flagged and crewed ships plummet from around 80 to just nine ships today.
The MUA has now placed its hopes in the creation of a Maritime Strategic Fleet of up to 12 privately owned and commercially operated Australian flagged and crewed vessels. The Albanese government has slowly got the ball rolling on promise, but a tender for three vessels that closed in November 2024 is still being “evaluated” 12 months later. Fearing that the process may have stalled, Crumlin issued a press release last month urging the Albanese government to immediately accelerate the Strategic Fleet Pilot and fully implement the Strategic Fleet proposal.
Albo’s man in the MUA
Crumlin’s relationship with Albanese may have just secured the beginnings of a Strategic Fleet. But the quid pro quo is that Crumlin is obliged to keep a lid on the MUA forcefully pushing back against the Labor government on issues such as the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal. Sure, the union’s last National Conference moved a resolution on AUKUS (see Maritime Workers Journal, Spring 2024, pp. 48-49). And some of the more left-wing MUA officials are given licence to speak out more stridently than others on this issue. But none of this leads to either the hard graft of politically convincing rank-and-file MUA members of the merits of this position, or serious organising within either the Labor Party or the ACTU to push for a harder line and upset the Albanese apple cart.
Events at the August 2023 Labor Party National Conference illustrate this. Defence Minister Richard Marles moved to add a lengthy pro-AUKUS statement to the party platform. MUA Conference delegates joined with other left unions to vote for an amendment that would delete all references to nuclear technology from this pro-AUKUS statement. It was clear from backroom negotiations that this amendment would fail, but as one anonymous senior party figure told Michael West Media, “the objections [of the left unions] were more theatre than reality … they wanted to be seen to oppose it and lose ceremonially”.
With the Marles pro-AUKUS statement adopted, conference declared that it would not so much as hear another amendment brought by NSW Legislative Council member Anthony D’Adam to remove all reference to AUKUS from the party’s platform. Marles and Albo got their way, the left unions played the role of ‘official opposition’ and the only serious anti-AUKUS amendment never saw the light of day.
Members treated as a rubber stamp
Crumlin hasn’t just limited the MUA’s opposition to the policies of the Albanese government. He has also limited the rank and file’s ability to freely elect its union officials. Under his tenure, appointing and reshuffling MUA officials without going to a general membership election has become standard procedure. For instance, in 2009 there was promotion of Ian Bray and Warren Smith as Assistant National Secretaries which skillfully elevated one official each from a WA “Rank and File” and the CPA into national office.
The most astounding example occurred in December 2020, when Christy Cain’s move to become CFMMEU National Secretary triggered the shifting of close to a dozen different officials in all different directions – from the union to the ITF, from branches to the national office (and vice-versa). Unfortunately, this procedure is fully in line with MUA Rule 42 which covers casual vacancies. Instead of facing immediate rank and file election, MUA officials have time and again been appointed a year of two out from Quadrennial elections, thus granting them the huge advantage of incumbency when elections finally roll around. Yes, these appointments do need to be endorsed at union general meetings, but with quorum requiring just 10 percent of the MUA members to be in attendance and little in the way of organised opposition, endorsement of these appointments is little more than a formality.
Will any of this change when Paddy Crumlin hands over the MUA National Secretary position to Jake Field? It seems unlikely. Field may not be able to balance as skillfully between the contending forces within the MUA or maintain as strong a relationship with PM Albanese as Crumlin has, but he probably doesn’t have to. Under Crumlin’s tenure, the MUA has settled into its role as a union that is industrially militant and politically left-wing, but which does little to organise either its own members or those in the Labor Party and the ACTU around left-wing positions that seriously challenge the leadership of the Parliamentary Labor Party. This is not about to change under the MUA’s new management.