A MAJOR battle is brewing between the building unions and the federal government which has important consequences for all unions and workers in Australia.
Planned new legislation would outlaw most rights to union representation. Pattern bargaining would be banned, union organisers’ right of entry vastly restricted, the right to strike almost abolished and heavy penalties imposed on “illegal” strikes, awards would be stripped back, and the right to belong to a union limited (eg, it would be illegal to ask anyone if they are a union member).
To enforce the changes, the government plans to introduce an industrial police force called the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Building workers already have to contend with the Building Industry Taskforce. However, it has no legislative powers. Every time a taskforce officer arrives on site, all workers down tools. Under the ABCC, such action would expose the unions to huge fines.
The ABCC would drag every industrial issue into the courts, and be able to pursue legal action even if the employers settle. If this building-industry specific legislation proves effective, it will flow on into other industries.
The second attack is through the existing federal Code of Practice. Companies that have signed enterprise bargaining agreements which contradict the code cannot tender for government contracts. However, the government has applied the rule flexibly. The code is not being enforced on the Albury-Wodonga bypass, for example, but will be enforced on the anti-terrorist Australia Post complex at Melbourne airport. Construction of this mail centre hasn’t started because the government has rejected every tenderer because they have signed an EBA. The Howard government’s “war on terror” comes second to its “war on unions”.
The government has so far spent $100 million of public money on attacking building workers. In response, the Victorian branch of the CFMEU has had to spend more than $1 million on legal fees and advertising. Once the real war begins these costs will escalate.
The main reason the building unions are in the government’s firing line is because they use secondary boycott tactics to give solidarity to other unions and community groups. This tactic has been used to support the nurses in the late 1980s, to textile workers, metal workers, public servants and the MUA picket lines in 1998. As well as instituting hundreds of “green bans” over the last 30 years, building workers have taken action against the Vietnam and Gulf wars and picketed Garuda airlines during Indonesia’s 1999 attack on East Timor.
If the government gets its way, all such solidarity actions will cease and another democratic right will have been abolished. Join the campaign to defend the building unions, and all workers’ rights. To organise a guest speaker, leaflets or raffle tickets for the campaign, contact your local Socialist Alliance branch or the state branch of the CFMEU or CEPU (plumbing or electrical divisions).
Mick Bull is CFMEU Apprenticeship and Careers Officer, Victorian branch, and a member of the Wills branch of the Socialist Alliance.