Sue Bolton, Melbourne
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) — originally established to protect consumers from shonky trade practices — has now been enlisted in the Howard government's drive to destroy trade unions as effective instruments for the defence of workers' rights.
On August 30, the ACCC announced that it had "instituted proceedings" against the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, construction company Bovis Lend Lease and "two individuals associated with the CFMEU for allegedly engaging in conduct leading to a secondary boycott contravening the Trade Practices Act 1974".
The ACCC alleges that the union colluded with Bovis Lend Lease in terminating a Canberra sub-contractor's contract in 2003. At the time, the union was negotiating a certified agreement with Bovis Lend Lease. The ACCC is seeking financial penalties against the union and Bovis Lend Lease of up to $2.5 million.
CFMEU construction division assistant national secretary Dave Noonan told Green Left Weekly that the union strongly denies the allegation.
Noonan was mystified as to why the ACCC had only just initiated the action, three-and-a-half years down the track. "But we do know that the Australian Building and Construction Commission is heavily involved and all of the agencies of the government that can get stuck into the union are doing so", he said.
"It's a matter of government policy that they are litigating extensively against the CFMEU. They've made no secret of the fact that they want to damage the effectiveness of our union and get rid of us if they can, so we are seeing a whole range of prosecutions against the union, its members and officials and of course the most notorious at the moment is the prosecution of 107 individual workers in Western Australia."
Noonan explained that the Trade Practices Act was brought in by the Whitlam Labor government as an important piece of legislation to protect the interests of consumers and to attack the notorious Australian trade cartels that existed at that time.
When Malcolm Fraser's Coalition government came into power in 1976, it was inspired by John Howard to introduce sections 45D and 45E into the Trade Practices Act. These sections, outlawing "secondary boycotts", were particularly targeted against trade unions.
"These provisions", Noonan said, "under which the union and I are being prosecuted are very close to John Howard's heart. They have his fingerprints all over them. It is one of the array of weapons that the government is using."
Noonan said that the CFMEU "will be defending the matter and we'll continue to seek to highlight the range of anti-union legislation and anti-worker legislation that the Howard government has put in place and has at its disposal".
He said that the ACCC's action is only one of many cases that have been taken against the CFMEU. "At the moment, our priority is to shine a light on the case of the Leightons 107" — the 107 Western Australian construction workers who are individually being sued for participating in a strike.
"We think that is the most potent and brutal exercise of state power against workers for many years", said Noonan. "We think there is a terrible conspiracy of silence about that issue in the mainstream media and we're going to continue to strive to highlight that issue.
"The prosecution of individual workers is a very disturbing development and that's the issue that we're going to concentrate on highlighting. We're going to fight all the cases, but the WA 107 is front and centre at the moment."