Sarah Smith, Perth
PM John "Howard makes laws to suit himself and the laws are all designed to smash us", said Kevin Reynolds, Western Australian secretary of the construction division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), at a public forum held on October 29.
Organised by the WA branch of the Maritime Union of Australia, the forum on "Fighting Howard's IR agenda" was attended by 200 people. Also speaking at the meeting was Craig Johnston, the former Victorian branch secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union; Kevin Bracken, the Victorian MUA secretary and WA MUA secretary Chris Cain.
The forum was held three days before the new anti-union construction industry laws — the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act (2005) and the Building and Construction Industry Improvement (Consequential and Transitional) Act (2005) — came into effect.
The legislation has established a new statutory office — the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) — to enforce the government's workplace regulations for the building industry.
Reynolds explained their implications, saying they "are primarily aimed at smashing the CFMEU but there [are] a number of other unions that will be caught up in it".
Under the new laws, workers in the construction industry will lose their right to silence when questioned by the ABCC. If they refuse to answer questions put to them by the ABCC, they can be jailed for up to six months.
These laws come on the back of the $66 million royal commission into the building industry. Reynolds explained in setting up the royal commission, the government "never got what they set out for. They believed that they would uncover all sorts of rorts, corruption, all sorts of skulduggery going on by our union in particular. They've had hundreds of ex-coppers who they've called their task force doing investigations for nearly two years, going through everyone's bank accounts, checking phones, tapping phones, surveillance on organisers, surveillance on people's homes. The sort of stuff that you wouldn't expect to happen in Australia."
Reynolds pointed out that his union has "been able to achieve wages and conditions for skilled and semi-skilled workers that are second to none throughout the world. We do pretty well [and] that's because of what we've done it collectively".
He added: "There's a lot of unions that recognise that if [the federal government] is successful at smashing the CFMEU then the roller coaster will continue, it won't stop at us."
Johnston explained to the meeting that the Howard government is "lining up the construction unions in some ways as a badge of honour because they're so effective, in particular the CFMEU. I think at the forefront they want to get first is the CFMEU in WA. It's a back-handed compliment because if you weren't any good they wouldn't be doing it."
He pointed out the broader attacks on working people under the Howard government: "It is not only the trade union movement that are under attack. Now they want to make us a nuclear waste dump. They now want to limit access to abortion. It seems they're trying to attack every type of working-class person, anyone who's got any opposition to their views. There is a massive attack on every civil liberty, every progressive cause currently in Australia."
Describing the ease with which the Howard government is implementing its anti-worker agenda, Bracken claimed it was because "in effect, we don't have an opposition and that's why the Liberals have been able to veer that far to the right.
"In the 1980s did we have the chance to vote and say that we wanted to go for privatisation, deregulation and free trade? No. It was a deal done between the big knobs in this country and both [major] political parties. Without being asked for it, it was a direction that they both headed in."
Cain spoke about the lessons for workers in Australia coming out of the experiences in New Zealand where similar IR legislation, introduced by a conservative government 10 years ago, is still on the books today, even though a Labor government has been in office for eight years. Cain said: "I've always believed in rank-and-file trade unionism. I've always believed in members, delegates and committees running their union, running their branch and having their say. In this state we are building a union where the members have ownership of it."
He concluded, "The struggles before us are the ones that count, the ones that made the conditions that we enjoy today. We have to remember that there were people before us who dared to struggle, and they dared to win. Today we have to struggle, but we will win."
From Green Left Weekly, November 9, 2005.
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