BY CHRIS SPINDLER
MELBOURNE — One thousand shop stewards and delegates from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the Electrical Trades Union, the Plumbers' Union and the Maritime Union of Australia joined forces on August 10 in an alliance meeting to condemn John Howard's royal commission into the building industry.
Unionists criticised the commission as being little more than a political stunt in the lead-up to the federal elections.
"Why is the commission getting set up in Victoria when there haven't been allegations of corruption made about the industry there?", one union leader asked, while others pointed to a lack of inquiries into violence by employers in an industry in which many workers die and the enormous sums going into the commission while housing, education and health care suffer.
CFMEU state secretary Martin Kingham, ETU secretary Dean Mighells, AMWU secretary Craig Johnston and plumbers union assistant secretary Earl Setches all addressed the meeting, as did unionist Dave Kerin, representing the "Skilled Six" facing charges for participating in an incident involving labour hire firm Skilled Enginerring, and Mark Pierce, representing workers at the Maintrain plant in Sydney, who have been on strike for five weeks.
The message from the speakers was uniform: the commission was a political attack on all unions and that unionists had to stand together to defeat it. Those in the line of fire were only doing their job: defending and improving the working conditions and standards of living of the industry's workers.