Liberals' BWIU ban illegal

Liberals' BWIU ban illegal

By Steve Painter

SYDNEY — In another blow to the accident-prone Greiner government, some aspects of its ban on government departments dealing with the Building Workers Industrial Union have been ruled illegal by the state Industrial Relations Commission. Justice Greg Maidment ruled that the ban violated legally sanctioned industrial agreements under the government's own Industrial Relations Act.

"It is somewhat ironic that the government is seeking to deregister the BWIU due to the royal commission allegations that it has acted lawlessly, and in its haste to follow through its attack on the BWIU the government itself has acted in a lawless manner", said BWIU NSW secretary Dennis Matthews.

The government has now been forced to modify its ban. A spokesperson for Industrial Relations Minister John Fahey declared the modification had been under way before the IRC ruling.

The ban on the union was imposed after Premier Nick Greiner used the release of the report from the $6000-a-day Royal Commission into Productivity in the NSW Building Industry as an opportunity to accuse the union of violence and intimidation.

In fact, royal commission head Roger Gyles recommended deregistration of the union not because of corruption, violence or intimidation, but because the union had an allegedly negative effect on productivity and efficiency. Gyles explicitly said there was no evidence of "widespread or serious corruption of full-time officials" and "no evidence of systematic violence or physical intimidation by unions or unionists".

Justice Maidment's ruling concerned legally sanctioned dispute-settling procedures in the public works department.

From GLW issue 60