Vol. 73/No. 1      January 12, 2009

The ABCC was put in place by the Liberal Party government of John Howard in 2005 to enforce the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act.

With the aim of driving the unions out of the construction industry, the act made it illegal for workers to strike or take other industrial action without the agreement of their employer.

Even if a worker is killed on site, his workmates must be able to prove they had a reasonable concern about an imminent risk to themselves to legally stop work and assess the safety situation.

The legislation allows the government to deny legal representation to workers and union representatives, and to fine or jail them, as well as authority to secretly record union meetings.

On the eve of the nationwide rallies the commonwealth director of public prosecutions dropped charges against Noel Washington, an official of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). He had faced six months in jail for refusing to give evidence to the ABCC about what he saw and heard at a meeting of workers in 2007.

In Brisbane the December 2 action against the ABCC took place the day after 25-year-old construction worker Tom Takurau died. A 20-ton beam fell from an overpass and crushed him while he was working on the Eastern Busway site. The beam was not bolted into place.

“The bottom line is the ABCC prevents unions from protecting the rights of workers, and safety is one of those rights,” CFMEU workplace health and safety coordinator Andrew Ramsay told the Courier-Mail.

“Today is not just about Noel Washington, today is the first steps of a campaign to eradicate the ABCC,” Australian Manufacturing Workers Union state secretary Steve McCartney told the rally in Perth. “We want to let the ALP [Australian Labor Party] know we are not happy and we won’t be happy until the ABCC is wiped off the face of the earth.”  
 
 
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