Vol. 80/No. 16 April 25, 2016
Australia gov’t presses attack on construction union rights
AND JOANNE KUNIANSKY
The industry remains one of the most dangerous. A building worker dies on the job every two weeks on average. The booming sector, a highly profitable part of an otherwise slowing economy, employs about a million workers in Australia, including many working for subcontractors. The CFMEU organizes most workers on big construction sites, including self-employed subcontractors, who sometimes hire apprentices.
Subcontracting is “a grey zone where ‘subbies’ get squeezed” by the big construction contractors, Nick Rawson, a carpenter and CFMEU member, told the Militant. Even subcontracting bosses “come to the union, which has an interest in seeing that all workers get their entitlements.”
Big building bosses rail against a higher than average rate of industrial disputes and what they call “restrictive work practices” and union “intimidation.” Their goal is to break the enterprise bargaining agreements that are meant to cover all workers on big sites. Turnbull seeks to re-establish and boost the punitive powers of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Set up in 2005 by an earlier Liberal-National government, the commission was given sweeping powers to interrogate construction workers and union representatives and to imprison them for refusing to testify.
In 2012 a Labor government replaced the commission with another body that retained many of its coercive powers. Re-establishing the ABCC would bring higher penalties and greater powers to outlaw union action. Turnbull also wants to expand the commission to include transport and dock unions.
In making the anti-union laws a key election issue, the prime minister is building on sensationalized allegations by a royal commission — a judicial inquiry with far-reaching powers — set up by the Liberal government in 2014 to probe the internal affairs of the CFMEU and other unions for “corruption.”
“100 CFMEU militants in court over building site disruptions,” headlined a front-page article in the March 17 Australian newspaper. The unionists are accused of more than 1,000 “industrial breaches,” ranging from alleged coercion and intimidation to unlawful industrial action and entering sites without permission. CFMEU state branches and officials have been fined a total of $7 million (US$5.4 million).
The building industry is notoriously “rough and corrupt,” said Rawson, and most workers see the union as “the cleanest part of the industry.”
Charges made against some CFMEU union officials have been quietly dropped. Thousands of building workers protested when two CFMEU officials faced criminal charges of “blackmail” over an industrial dispute in a Melbourne court last December. The union has expelled one official in Canberra who admitted to taking bribes.
In Perth, 101 construction workers were recently charged with taking “unlawful industrial action” almost three years ago when they allegedly attended a union meeting at a construction site. Charges were subsequently dropped against 33 of the workers, who were not scheduled to work that day.
“Productivity is up, safety is down,” Howard Byrne, a mobile crane driver and CFMEU job delegate, told the Militant. “The industry is more dangerous than five or 10 years ago. The union is in a battle every day over safety.
“I see it as an attack on the working class by the ruling classes,” Byrne said, “when they go after the strongest union and try to discredit it.”
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