Comment by Michael Bull
The construction division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) is in good shape to win a shorter working week. Its campaign for a 36-hour work week is the next step in the Victorian branch's increasing activism.
The campaign is the first offensive union campaign in Victoria over working conditions (rather than wages) since the nurses strike in the mid 1980s. The new militancy in the building industry comes from an improvement in the economy, unity between building workers and their union leaderships, and a movement away from ALP domination of union policies.
Unprecedented unity
During the building boom of the 1980s, the war between the Builders Labourers Federation on one hand and the Building Workers Industrial Union and the ALP state government on the other, broke down working class unity to the detriment of wages and conditions. There was no unified action against the federal ALP government's Prices and Incomes Accord and building workers, along with the rest of the working class, suffered whilst profits soared.As the economy emerged out of the 1990s recession, the BLF joined forces with the newly amalgamated CFMEU, which had rid itself of the worst of the BWIU's former leaders. This, coupled with more progressive leaderships elected in the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) and, later, the metal division of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), created unprecedented industry-wide unity.
The building unions set about getting militants, who had previously been blacklisted, back onto building sites. These militants have had a major impact, on both the education of new layers of workers and the political and industrial direction of the construction unions.
Tested alliance
The alliance between the CFMEU, AMWU, ETU and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) has since been put to the test. In 1996, the CFMEU easily won a 16% pay increase over two years and beat back a federal Coalition government attempt to tax travel allowances. Alliance action also helped workers beat a lockout at the Spotswood ACI plant.The alliance also supported the ETU during the 1997 Citipower dispute and it was the backbone of mass rallies and industrial action against state government changes to WorkCover, forcing significant concessions from building industry employers. The CFMEU won a further two-year pattern bargaining agreement at the beginning of 1998, which included a 15% pay increase.
In 1998, CFMEU and alliance members were prominent on the MUA picket lines outside Patrick Stevedoring in Melbourne. In 1999, the CFMEU gave strong support to the (eventually victorious) workers locked out by the Australian Dyeing Company, and to the campaign for Australian government intervention to end the violence in East Timor.
Under threat
However, the strength of the CFMEU and the other militant left unions will come under significant threat during the next economic recession. In the last recession, under an ALP government, the working class gave massive ground on wages and conditions. We can't let that happen again.During recessions, when the bargaining power of the unions is at its weakest, it is crucial that militant left unions are independent of the ALP, whether it is in government or not. Otherwise, coming out of the recession, unions will be in a weaker position than before.
The only way of maintaining working-class strength and unity, especially in economic downturns, is to build a real political alternative to both the Labor and Liberal parties, one that takes up all the grievances that the next recession is sure to deliver. The left unions must start to prepare themselves now, or the next stage may prove fatal.
[Michael Bull is a long-term activist in the Victorian branch of the construction division of the CFMEU, a delegate to the union's state conference and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]