BY SUE BOLTON
Any white-collar worker or member of an industrially weak union is kidding themselves if they think that the federal Coalition government's legislation restricting the rights of building workers won't also affect them.
At the press conference following the release of the legislation on September 18, federal workplace relations minister Tony Abbott said: "Well, if [the laws] are successful, you'd be an idiot not to at least consider extending them to other industries."
The nasties in the draft Building and Construction Industry Improvement Bill include bans on strike action unless a secret ballot is conducted and strikes restricted to two weeks, after which there is a mandatory cooling-off period. During this period, the dispute would be referred to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), which would be instructed to hand down a simplified award that would be limited to providing only basic entitlements.
If the legislation is implemented, a 14-day cooling-off period would come into action before industrial action could be taken over safety issues. After that, action would only be legal if approved by a secret ballot of workers. This could lead to a big increase in deaths and injuries on work sites.
The draft legislation also gives the AIRC the power to suspend or terminate a bargaining period where a party engages in pattern bargaining.
A 200-strong permanent Australian Building and Construction Commission will be established with coercive police powers to collect evidence of contractors being forced to accept industry-wide deals. It will also have the power to cancel union officials' right to enter building sites.
If the federal government gets away with this legislation for building workers, it will be disastrous. It will make it more likely that it could be extended to all unions, which would be catastrophic.
Many might be wondering why the government needs to implement even more laws, when the Workplace Relations Act makes most forms of industrial action illegal already.
The answer is in an article by Abbott in the September 19 Australian Financial Review. He wrote: "A gap in the Workplace Relations Act as it stands is its reliance on parties to enforce the law. This works well enough in most industries ... In the construction industry, however, companies might win in court only to lose on site".
Despite the very restrictive Workplace Relations Act, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union's (CFMEU) Victorian and Western Australian branches have been able to extend the 36-hour work week throughout most of the industry, as well as win other improvements on an industry-wide basis.
This successful example sparked the Victorian branch of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, and a number of other unions, to implement a pattern bargaining approach. This is where unions sign enterprise bargaining agreements that expire on a common date, enabling them to take protected action across an industry in a bid to win reasonable wages and conditions across the industry.
Only a few unions are using pattern bargaining, but Abbott is aware that, since it delivers better gains, more unions may follow their lead.
Employers faced with a militant, industry-wide campaign will often agree to union demands in order to ensure industrial peace and continuous production, even though the law favours the bosses' interests. This is what is making Abbott furious. And he is trying to force employers to take up his government's anti-union crusade, getting them to put their long-term interest of breaking union power ahead of their worries of short-term industrial disruption.
Abbott's legislation is designed to relieve the pressure on the building industry bosses by establishing police presence on building sites, and by increasing the state's powers to prevent pattern bargaining.
But this increased state intervention into defending the bosses' interests will not be restricted to the building industry.
In the higher education sector, the government isn't just relying on government commissions to intervene in the industrial process. It's using access to government funding as a lever to force university management to implement anti-union measures such as individual, non-union agreements.
On September 22, Abbott and education minister Brendan Nelson issued a new set of rules barring universities from accessing top-up funding worth $404 million unless they agree to make individual agreements compulsory for staff and not to encourage union membership. The new rules came into effect on the day that they were announced.
This sudden announcement contradicted advice that the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee had received from the government on federal budget night that universities would not be forced to offer individual contracts to staff.
The Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, which covers security officers, cleaners and catering staff on universities, says that its members will be the first to suffer the consequences if university administrations buckle to government pressure.
The University of Sydney, which was meant to sign a new three-year enterprise bargaining agreement on September 24, pulled out of the agreement at the last minute because of the announcement. The University of Sydney National Tertiary Education Union branch is undertaking a two-week industrial campaign, culminating in a 24-hour strike on October 7.
The federal government has used similar tactics on construction projects, and most recently at the new federally funded mail-sorting centre at Tullamarine in Melbourne, where it ensured the successful tenderer had a non-union agreement.
In the September 19 edition of the NSW Labor Council's Workers Online, Australian Nursing Federation federal secretary Jill Iliffe argued that Abbott's attack could be turned against nurses. She said that at present, public hospital nurses negotiate pattern agreements statewide, but Abbott had recently floated the idea of paying country nurses more than their city colleagues.
Under the new building industry legislation, the AIRC will be provided with a detailed set of criteria to determine whether a union has engaged in pattern bargaining.
Even before the draft building industry goes to parliament on November 3, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is being used by the government to investigate building industry agreements in Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania.
One of these agreements, the Victorian Building Industry Agreement, sets standards on working hours, site allowances and occupational health and safety regulations across building sites throughout Victoria. It ensures that enterprise agreements are recognised on all building sites in Victoria and ensures that only union members are hired.
On September 18, the AFR reported that the building industry royal commission had found that pattern agreements in the building industry accounted for 89% of all agreements from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2001. They had common expiry dates, allowing unions to run industry-wide campaigns. The rapid establishment of the 36-hour work week in the past year is a clear example of the gains of this approach.
Unions are expecting the ACCC to be more anti-union under its new head, former investment banker Graeme Samuel. It is expected that the ACCC will try to stop the use of secondary boycotts as well as pattern bargaining.
Abbott argues that the CFMEU deserves to be singled out because of its "lawlessness". He bases these claims on the findings of the building industry royal commission.
However, the 23rd volume of the royal commission's findings, which has never been made public, indicates that the royal commission was lawless itself.
The AFR reported on September 18 that the commission's head, Terence Cole, acknowledges in the volume that the way the government set up the inquiry required him to make findings about conduct or practices that "might" have broken — not did that break — the law.
The AFR quotes Cole as saying, "Most of the matters investigated by the commission 'might' have constituted a breach of civil or criminal law", and, "If I did not make any findings in relation to such matters then the number of findings that would have been open to the commission would have been very small. That would not have been satisfactory because it would have unduly limited the evidential material to which I could make references in explaining the need for reforms that I have recommended."
The federal budget already alludes to the possibility of denying health, education and community services workers — as part of "essential services" — the same right to strike as other workers. If the government can't get more wholesale anti-union laws through the Senate, it will start attacking sector by sector.
The unions most in the firing line — and that is all that use pattern bargaining — must consider a pact to take action to support each other.
A strong response from unions is needed to stop Abbott in his tracks. The union movement needs to draw a line in the sand, as it did when the Maritime Union of Australia was under attack in 1998.
The destruction of the CFMEU would be a heavy blow for all of us — even those who are not working now. It supports a host of progressive causes. The CFMEU was the only union to take stop work action against the war in Iraq. It was also the union that campaigned hardest amongst its members to build support for the East Timorese in 1999.
In early October, the CFMEU is holding a national week of action. In some states, there will be stop work meetings of all building industry unions. In other states, there will be building industry stopwork meetings followed by marches and rallies. All those who can should come out to support the union!
From Green Left Weekly, October 1, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.