By Tim Gooden
GEELONG — The Victorian building industry faces a three month shutdown from March 11 if threats by the Master Builders' Association of Victoria (MBA) are made good. The threatened lockout is the employers' response to demands by construction workers for a nine-day fortnight.
However, the employers are already splitting on whether to proceed with the threats. Three of the state's largest construction companies — Multiplex, Lend Lease and Civil and Civic — have signalled that they want to negotiate an agreement rather than lock workers out. Four hundred employers have already signed up to a shorter working week through the Victorian Building Industry Agreement.
Other builders, including Baulderstone and the ABI group, claim they will go ahead with the lockouts.
Victorian building bosses have attempted large-scale lockouts seven times since the 1960s; none have succeeded. The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union expects this attempt to last two weeks at most.
The Victorian secretary of the CFMEU's construction division, Martin Kingham, told Green Left Weekly, "This is the last roll of the dice for the MBA. The union is now in the final stages — we're near victory and this is the final push."
The union has advised its members that they should attend work as usual and defy the lockout on all sites. One worker told Green Left Weekly, "We'll cut the locks if we have to and keep working while maintaining our bans. It remains to be seen if the Bracks government will call in the cops on workers — that wouldn't be good."
Other building unions, including the Electrical Trades Union and the plumbers' union, held mass members' meetings on March 8 and then walked off the job for the rest of the day. These unions are now set to enter the dispute; a previous agreement had kept them out of industrial action.
Construction workers employed by the ABI group in Geelong were told on March 9 that they would be locked out. They responded by picketing a meeting of employers, forcing its cancellation. Geelong CFMEU organiser Brendan Murphy told the Geelong Advertiser that workers in the city would defy the lockout.
All the construction unions have now called an industry-wide stop-work meeting for March 17, at 10am at Trades Hall in Melbourne, to plan their response to the threats.
Working CFMEU members are already contributing $20 a week to a fund to support locked out workers. Contributions to the fighting fund can be made through state or federal offices of the CFMEU.