- The Guardian
- Issue #2123
Rally in support of CFMEU, Sydney. Photo: MUA
Twenty-seven workers died in the construction industry in 2023. Without the CFMEU that figure, in this spectacularly dangerous industry, would have been much higher. The recent Administration Act imposed by the ALP upon the CFMEU leaves construction workers exposed to more deaths and increased levels of employer criminality and neglect. The legislation is not about CFMEU criminality despite the mass media veil and subterfuge.
Administration of the CFMEU is a political act and we need to defeat the anti-union politics it embodies.
WHO BENEFITS FROM ADMINISTRATION?
The government has created the “Scheme of Administration” that drills into the union, not employers and their associates, nor their organisations. It is repressive and effectively a full-scale assault on democracy.
These undemocratic and arbitrary powers of the administrator include:
- Suspension or removal (dismissal) of union officers
- Declarations that offices are vacant
- The timing and control of elections
- Disciplinary actions by the administrator, including expulsion of union members and disqualification of officers for up to 5 years without the need to comply with the union’s rules (next elections are due in 4 years’ time)
- Termination of employment of employees of the Construction and General Division or its branches
- Arbitrary alteration of the union’s rules
- Delegation by the administrator of the administrator’s functions or powers
- The engagement or employment of persons by the administrator to assist them.
The bill attempts to override all other legislation such as unfair dismissal laws, allowing the minister to sack democratically elected union officials and other employees.
The Administrator’s new “complaints procedure” for example, about “improper, unlawful or criminal” behaviour can only be about an officer or employee of the CFMEU or any of its branches in the Construction and General Division. Thus, members cannot submit complaints about abusive behaviour by employers or their agents.
The real criminals are the construction industry bosses, who effectively murder people by the dozen on a yearly basis. No boss is threatened with administration.
The intent is to make a weak and bureaucratic union, all on the back of untested and untried allegations.
Every industry develops in the context of the class struggle, and that starts with each employer seeking enough profit in competitive processes with other employers. A key to capitalism’s competitive advantage lies in driving down safety standards, pay and conditions, and greater exploitation of the workers.
To remove the effectiveness of the union in this context means the building employers and multi-nationals win, certain sections/factions of the ALP win, and overall the ruling class wins because of the ongoing threat to the effectiveness of all unions.
THE ALP ATTACKS AGAIN
The Labor government deliberately chose to design their scheme with the Liberals. To their credit the Greens said, in effect, “we won’t be tainted by such disgraceful laws,” and opposed them.
The Labor government has taught the conservatives – above and beyond their normal historical legislative and law-based attacks, including Royal Commissions – how to take apart militant unionism.
Nothing will stop this happening if the legislation remains unchallenged. The Coalition is already eyeing this approach, where no union will be safe once big business gets their media mates to make assertions of impropriety in order to destroy any union they wish to target. The ALP is setting the stage for Coalition escalation of anti-union ALP policy.
Examples of this occurring previously are:
- Individual contacts
- Destruction of awards
- Reith’s Workplace relations Bill
- The Fair Work Act
- Banning multi-employer bargaining
- Deregistration of the Builders Labourers Federation and Pilots unions
- Productivity trade-offs
- The erroneous economic theory that wages cause inflation
- Privatisation and introducing neo-liberal policies.
WHO DO LABOR AND LIBERAL REPRESENT?
The early 1890s in Australia was a period of intense class struggle.
The ALP has existed since 1891. It was a political party set up by the trade union movement arising out of the many disastrous and unsuccessful strikes around that time.
The class struggle, the battle between the ruling class and the working class – between capital and labour – needs to be dealt with politically. The ALP’s founders believed that the role of the state was to be an impartial body, and that political power, in the form of state control – forming government – would be enough to wrest power from big capital and the ruling class.
It was easy to draw the conclusion that if workers, through a political party, could control the state and form government they could end the battle between capital and labour. The Shearers Union General Secretary reported in 1893: “With a Labour government in power, there would be an end to the stoppage of work which acts so inimically to our interests.”
This idea that you need government power and state control to stop the need for strikes is erroneous. We need the state to help win strike struggles, but no capitalist state will or can do this.
No Labor government in power has ever stopped the class struggle in its tracks. No Labor government has ever had control of the state apparatus, the courts, the military, or even complete control of a legislative agenda.
Employers never cease to wage the class struggle, regardless of the capitalist government in power. If workers cease to wage the class struggle, they surrender the political field to the employers and strengthen the employer position. The very essence of capitalism is class rule and the exploitation of one person by another. There is no non-class capitalism or non-class state apparatus.
The Accord, a class-collaborationist social contract between Labor and the ACTU in the 1980s, demonstrated this.
The net result of deterring workers from engaging in class struggle in favour of having a seat at the table with government was to:
- Destroy trade union density
- Stop workers waging class struggle – while the employers continued their attacks
- Shift the national income distribution away from the workers towards the employing class
- Lower the standard of living of Australian workers.
The bottom line is the ALP and the Liberals represent the same class forces. They do it differently on a range of issues, but neither represents the interests of the working class.
The ALP relies on class collaboration. The conservatives prefer a blunt instrument.
The CFMEU administration legislation is being implemented through class collaboration, and in particular by the ACTU. This collaborative approach is a pattern in the ACTU, and the struggle against this approach most certainly remains an important and necessary arena of class struggle. Organising against the dominance of class collaborationism and ALP control over unions should be a key arena of struggle for militant unions who want to be independent from the clutches of social-democracy.
The CPA contends that the ACTU should not be split, but should become an unrelenting battle-ground for progressive, militant and class struggle-based unionism.
THE VEIL OF CRIMINALITY
No one should support corrupt union officials. Members have the right to dump them and they should. But seriously, you can’t shout corruption through the mouthpieces of the employers and ruling class media and then have governments jump in to smash a union without proper process, no proof, and on the basis of unfounded allegations.
All anyone has to do – and the Liberals will do it even more vigorously – is cry corruption and lawlessness.
Then we can expect to see an extension of how lawlessness is defined. How long before a picket line is described as thuggish and coercive behaviour? How about scabs? There is already serious case law to prosecute workers defending against scabbery and the undermining of strikes and struggles against bosses.
Currently, the grubby multi-national Qube is suing 20 wharfies in Melbourne for taking “protected” industrial action. The lines of legality and lawlessness are already being redrawn and this process will escalate under a Liberal government. How long before a Right of Entry bureaucratic slip will be trespass? Employers will continue to exploit this approach and will keep having a legal shot at the stumps until they create precedents and continue to create an image of union lawlessness.
This will be done with the support of the ruling class media in all its forms to create a false condition that must be arrested through placing more unions into administration.
The bottom line is you and your union could easily be next.
This is not about the CFMEU. It is about unions that stand up to the employers and ruling class. The legislation must be defeated and never allowed to occur again.
WHAT TO DO?
The CPA supports the “Your Union Your Choice” campaign.
https://your-union-your-choice.raiselysite.com/
https://www.facebook.com/p/Your-Union-Your-Choice-61564648662655/
We all need to work within our unions and across the broader movement to campaign for unions to oppose this treacherous legislation and ruling class attempt to completely destroy the trade union movement.
TAKE ACTION!
- Win support of your workplace and urge your union to oppose the administration scheme
- Attend every CFMEU rally and action
- Hold public forums to put the truth about administration to the public
- Be active online in support of the CFMEU and against administration
- Support the Your Union Your Choice High Court case by donating.
