Bosses and Bulldogs
The sacking of Jason Akermanis - on the basis of a newspaper article and suggestions he will criticise teammates in an upcoming book - raises many questions for unionists in the aftermath of the battle against WorkChoices. Just what can a modern footballer say? In 2005 when commenting on the war in Iraq, Akermanis’ now teammate Robert Murphy said ‘I think they ballsed it up. I don't believe in war, there have to be other ways around it. How long (Troops in Iraq) has it been now? Two years now, I don't think we have any control’. Murphy went on to express his opposition to the mandatory detention of asylum seekers. Had this been Akermanis would the club have taken offence?
And what if Western Bulldogs players had joined the campaign against the impact of John Howard’s WorkChoices legislation on low paid workers in the western suburbs or joined Murphy in his opposition to Australia’s asylum seeker policy. Would the club have taken umbrage had they done so and there’d been the kind of heat that emerged from Akermanis’ foray into whether gay footballers should come out?
Imagine if Robert Murphy announced after a Julia Gillard election campaign visit to the Western Oval that he thought her asylum seeker policy was little better than John Howard’s inhumane policies? And what if Murphy – he’s probably not that radical – announced that he didn’t want to participate in any election stunts at the Western Oval? Would he have ended up on a seat in front of his teammates?
No unionist who watched Bulldogs CEO Campbell Rose explaining on the Footy Show why Aker was sacked could have felt comfortable about the reasons offered. We surely need to ensure that an employee isn’t sacked at the whim – as we argued was the case under WorkChoices - of a boss. And whilst it sometimes appears that Akermanis’ grasp of the needs of the collective is compromised by his individualism, surely it's encumbent on the AFL Players Association to examine the circumstances surrounding his sacking.
The ETU would hate to think that we’re reached a point where failure to toe the party line will result in a footballer's sacking!
