Sue Bolton
On June 21, the Democrats agreed to a federal Coalition government initiative to step up attacks on unionists in the building industry.
The Democrats agreed to support government legislation that would:
* Increase the powers of the Building Industry Taskforce. Building workers and employers would face up to six months' jail if they fail to cooperate with the Building Industry Taskforce and would lose their right against self-incrimination.
* Triple all penalties in the Workplace Relations Act. This includes increasing fines from $2200 to $6600 for individuals and from $11,000 to $33,000 for companies. It would also disqualify persons who are convicted of a criminal offence and receive a suspended sentence from holding any union office for five years.
Immediately after securing agreement from the Democrats for these changes, workplace relations minister Kevin Andrews introduced the legislation into parliament.
Under the new legislation, the new coercive powers of the Building Industry Taskforce would not be conferred directly on the taskforce but on the secretary of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, who answers directly to the minister.
The proposal to legislate that persons be barred from holding union office if they receive a suspended sentence for a criminal offence is in direct response to the sentence given last month to former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) Victorian branch secretary Craig Johnston as a result of an industrial dispute in 2001.
The Coalition government and the employers were furious that Johnston wasn't jailed because of his role in leading campaigns to advance the wages and conditions of AMWU members and solidarity actions in support of other unions. If Johnston had been jailed, he would have been barred from standing for election to a union post for five years, and at the end of the five years would have had to seek permission from the federal court to be eligible to stand in union elections again.
The Building Industry Taskforce is primarily focused on catching out unions for taking "illegal" industrial action, or seeking "unreasonable" right of entry onto construction sites.
The new powers it has been given are an attack on the unions, despite protests from Democrats workplace relations spokesperson Andrew Murray that the taskforce will be "even-handed" in investigating both employers and employees.
At the same time as cutting their deal with PM John Howard on the building industry, the Democrats agreed with the finding of a Senate inquiry that the Coalition government's Building and Construction Industry Improvement Bill 2003 should be rejected.
The Democrats produced a minority report in which Murray stated that the Democrats supported "one central proposition behind the bills — that greater regulation and enforcement of workplace relations law is necessary", but did not support the second central proposition that "industry-specific legislation and sweeping new Workplace Relations Act provisions are necessary to achieve this aim".
Murray's minority report takes great pains to try to appear impartial between employees, unions and employers. But he ends up supporting the multi-billion-dollar construction companies against workers with his support for the Building Industry Taskforce. He ignores the fact that workers need the full freedom to organise to defend themselves against the rapacious greed of their employers.
Murray accepts the Coalition government's argument when it pays lip-service to the taskforce investigating employers as well. However, since the taskforce was established in 2001, it has only rarely investigated companies and focuses almost all of its attention on unions.
The Democrats' most recent deal with the Howard government demonstrates that they haven't changed their spots since they passed the Workplace Relations Act in 1996 and the GST in 1998.
From Green Left Weekly, June 30, 2004.
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