BY SUE BOLTON
MELBOURNE — Federal workplace relations minister Tony Abbott is lashing out at the two main militant unions that defend their members' rights, regardless of the federal government's anti-worker industrial relations laws.
The two unions in Abbott's sights are the Victorian branches of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU).
In the past month, Abbott has slandered the Victorian branches of the AMWU and CFMEU in parliament, criticised BHP Steel for dropping charges against striking unionists at its Hastings factory, threatened to withhold industry assistance from car companies unless they take on the unions and threatened to stop federal funding to Victorian government projects unless the Labor government agrees to the Office of the Employment Advocate inspecting the sites to ensure that construction unions don't implement a "no ticket, no start" policy.
However, the June 16 Sunday Age editorial warned that Abbott's confrontationist antics — including the threat to cut federal funds from state government projects — could backfire on the federal government.
"By forcing the state government's hand on this issue before the royal commission [into the construction industry] has completed its inquiries, Mr Abbott makes the mistake of further politicising [commissioner] Cole's work.
"Mr Abbott is right in his wish to wipe out dishonest and restrictive labour practices on work sites, but he falls into the polemical error of casting unions in the villains' role, a move that runs the risk of antagonising honest workers who support unions in their legitimate and important task of representing the interests of employees. Reviving historic enmities between workers and employers does little to advance trust and productivity in the workplace."
When Abbott initially told the Victorian government that Canberra would not pay its $90 million contribution towards the MCG redevelopment, the government of Premier Steve Bracks rejected federal funding under these conditions. However, the state minister responsible for "major projects", Peter Batchelor, told the June 19 Melbourne Age that the government was happy to discuss work conditions on the projects with Abbott and other federal ministers.
Test ignored
The Office of the Employment Advocate is being used by Abbott to prevent unions from breaking the Workplace Relations Act. However, the office is breaking the law itself.
In the June 7 Workers Online, the NSW Labor Council revealed that employment advocate Jonathan Hamberger had admitted to a Senate estimates committee on June 3 that individual contracts — known as Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) — are routinely approved without the legal "no disadvantage" test being applied. This is meant to ensure that workers shifting to AWAs from awards are not worse off.
Hamberger admitted that he relied on the employers' word that workers were not worse off under the thousands of AWAs sent to him to be checked.
When the Coalition government was elected in 1996, it promised that no worker would be worse off under AWAs than they would be under the system of awards and collective agreements. Workers Online revealed that workers on AWAs often receive up to $10,000 a year less than workers who previously performed the work under union-negotiated agreements.
Abbott was especially angered by the outcome of the BHP Steel dispute at Hastings. As part of the settlement, BHP Steel agreed to drop all legal action against the unions and individual picketers.
On June 14, Skilled Engineering — the company which is pressing charges against AMWU activists, including Victorian secretary Craig Johnston — hosted a business lunch for Abbott. Between courses, Abbott told his corporate admirers that the federal government would ensure that unions which broke the Workplace Relations Act would be prosecuted regardless of whether or not companies wanted to press charges.
'Not tough enough'
This is the theme he began at a meeting of the right-wing HR Nicholls Society in March. Abbott chastised employers for not being tough enough on unions and complained that some unionists have "drawers full" of unheeded court orders to pay fines. He announced that the government would make changes to ensure that unionists paid their fines for breaches of the Workplace Relations Act or went to jail.
Industry minister Ian MacFarlane announced on June 17 that Canberra would increase the pressure on car industry unions by making industry assistance conditional on industrial "reforms", such as enforcing compulsory secret ballots before industrial action.
These threats by Abbott and MacFarlane, as well as the charges being brought against AMWU activists for the incidents at Johnson Tiles and Skilled Engineering, are designed to nobble the AMWU before its 2003 wages and conditions campaign begins.
Over the next 12 months, more than 500 enterprise agreements will come up for renegotiation across the manufacturing industry. During these negotiations, workers can legally take strike action to pursue improvements in wages and conditions.
"This is a campaign being run by a number of militant unions, especially in manufacturing, for pattern bargaining", whined Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry spokesperson Peter Anderson. "It's a device being used to recreate an industry[-wide] right to strike", he told the June 16 Australian Financial Review.
Abbott has introduced five separate industrial relations bills to parliament, which relate to changes he unsuccessfully tried to get through the Senate prior to the 2001 federal election. The bills aim to exempt small businesses from unfair dismissal legislation, outlaw industry-wide (pattern) bargaining, outlaw industrial action during enterprise bargain negotiations and make secret ballots compulsory before strike action.
By splitting the legislation into separate bills, Abbott hopes he can lure the Australian Democrats or the Labor Party into passing some of them. However, he can't rely on this, hence his threats.
The big business media has also stepped up its campaign to finger unions which the big employers want targeted, in particular the Victorian branches of the AMWU and the CFMEU. Newspaper articles increasingly portray these unions as aggressors and employers as innocent victims.
Unions' real 'crimes'
The main "crimes" of the AMWU and CFMEU are to seek industry-wide wages and conditions through pattern bargaining and to militantly defend their members against rapacious employers. Some construction companies are still wincing from the 36-hour week won by construction workers in Victoria.
An Age article on June 15 dramatised the differences between building workers' wages and conditions in Victoria and those in NSW. It pointed to the example of Orica, which built identical chemical plants in Melbourne and Sydney. Apparently, the plant in Sydney was built on time, whereas the plant in Melbourne was almost 12 months behind schedule. Orica reported to shareholders that "a poor industrial relations climate in Victoria led to significant delays in the construction".
The article also quoted Master Builders' Association executive director Brian Welch as saying that it cost up to 25% more to build in Melbourne than in Sydney. "The CFMEU is more flexible and less invasive [in NSW] than here... Why? Look at the amount of days available for work. NSW has rostered days off but they do not have productivity leisure days like we do. We have a 37- and, soon, a 36-hour week; they have a 38-hour week.
"We will pay overtime sooner. They have less rigid inclement weather regimes, a less militant approach to health and safety and no days off when a worker dies in the industry. And clearly there is more industrial action in Victoria. Between 20 and 25 days, maybe 30 extra days, are available for work in NSW at a lower rate of pay."
At the end of the BHP Steel dispute, the Australian Financial Review editorial on June 12 frothed with venom at the AMWU's campaign to save jobs at BHP.
"There is no royal commission into the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, but it's not for want of trying on the union's part. No industrial organisation has done more in recent times to resurrect Australia's reputation abroad for cutting off its nose to spite its face through bloody-minded strikes and pickets than this rogue union.
"True, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union has rarely been out of the headlines since the ... Cole royal commission. But the CFMEU's victims at first instance are Australian developers and their customers; it has only an indirect impact on our export fortunes. The same can't be said for the AMWU, which has brought Australia's blossoming car industry, which hopes to sell more than $5 billion worth of cars and parts overseas this year, to a standstill three times in the past 10 months."
The AFR castigated Craig Johnston for ditching enterprise bargaining and attempting to return to a centralised wage fixing model via pattern bargaining. "Two months later, the AMWU's NSW branch, no friends of Mr Johnston, brought the car industry to a standstill by laying siege to Tristar Steering and Suspension... In April, the South Australian branch repeated the same trick at Walker Australia, an Adelaide-based exhaust maker", the editorial moaned.
From Green Left Weekly, June 26, 2002.
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