SYDNEY — Chanting “Hands off our union!” tens of thousands of construction workers marched off the job and rallied in major cities across Australia Aug. 27. The action was a resounding protest against the federal Labor Party government, which days earlier seized control of the construction division of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union, placing it under control of a state administrator.
CFMEU construction workers here were joined by maritime, electrical and manufacturing workers, plumbers and others in a sea of union flags. “This is an attack on every working man and woman in this country,” Paddy Crumlin, national secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and national president of the CFMEU, told the crowd.
The CFMEU is one of the largest industrial unions in Australia, with over 115,000 members.
With bipartisan support, the government rushed the takeover through Parliament. Hundreds of elected union officers were dismissed and ordered to hand over union property, including cars, credit cards, computers and documents.
“If they think by sacking the leadership our union is going to disappear, they are very wrong,” Darren Greenfield, CFMEU New South Wales state secretary, said at the Sydney rally. Workers walked off the job despite threats they could face penalties.
Crumlin said Sept. 1 the government move emboldened employers to walk away from contract negotiations and ended the union’s ability to enforce safety on the job.
The government attack was prepared by a two-month media campaign that sensationalized allegations of criminal links, intimidation and bribe-taking by some union officials. An editorial in the Aug. 27 Sydney Morning Herald dismissed the sizable protests as “addle-headed support of lowlifes and gangsters.”
As part of the ruling-class campaign to weaken the construction workers and divide the unions, meritocratic layers in the Labor Party and media have sought to portray CFMEU and other industrial workers as backward, thuggish and misogynist. “The average trade union member these days is not a big boofy bloke in a hard hat and black T-shirt, but a 46-year-old female nurse,” wrote Phillip Coorey in the Financial Review.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions, the national union federation, has backed the federal government assault on the CFMEU construction division and suspended its affiliation to the ACTU.
This is the biggest ruling-class assault on a union in Australia in decades.