BY SAM WAINWRIGHT
SYDNEY The proceedings have been more like a prosecution of the union than a genuine investigation of the building industry This was how Andrew Ferguson, secretary of the NSW Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Unions construction and general branch described the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry.
The commission is part of the Coalition governments third term attack on the union movement. Its role is to tarnish the name of the CFMEU, one of the countrys strongest unions, and so pave the way for more anti-union legislation in the federal parliament. The commission headed by Terence Cole will cost the taxpayer at least $60 million. Cole himself is being paid $2500 per day for his services.
The commission sat in Sydney between June 3 and July 5. Green Left Weekly spoke to Ferguson about what went on at the commission and what the union plans to do in response.
The [commissions lawyers] said that they would provide evidence, based on the four or five week period when they were in Sydney, of gross malpractice by the CFMEU which would horrify the ordinary citizen. Theyve been unsuccessful in doing that, Ferguson explained.
The commissions hearings give employers and anyone else with a grudge against the CFMEU a platform from which to make accusations against the union and its members. The big business media has latched on to the opportunity to run lurid but unproven stories of union thuggery.
Ferguson explained that many accusations flowed from union officials simply demanding employers abide by their legal obligations: They had scores of employers complain about what most people would regard as routine activity by any union campaigning for enterprise bargaining agreements. There are employers, particularly in regional NSW, that have not had contact with any union organisation in the past. Often theyve not been familiar with the safety legislation in NSW that gives union officials a right of entry.
Other branches of the CFMEU have boycotted the commission hearings, arguing that to comply simply gives it credibility. The NSW branch decided to participate, trying to force employer abuses on to its agenda and into the public debate.
There is a bit of a debate, Ferguson said, and different branches have got a different emphasis on the issue. [There are] hundreds of employers across the country putting in statements and giving evidence. If its not contradicted, it then represents evidence and we think that its helpful to their agenda. We have put in 66 statements contradicting their evidence and the evidence we have put in has been quite substantial.
That doesnt mean we dont believe that this is a politically motivated royal commission, but we believe that [putting in statements about employer abuses] makes [Coles] job more difficult and with a lot of evidence contrary to the employer, hes then got to, in his final recommendations, convince the Democrats and Greens to run a legislative attack on the union.
Ferguson explained that the union had provided the commission with box loads of information regarding abuses by employers, including workplace safety abuses and details of deaths that have occurred on Sydney building sites. We forced him to listen to the mum of a 17 year old who was killed at Broadway. That got some positive media for the union.
The union also lodged a 100-page report on workers compensation fraud that shows about 30% of contractors are ripping off the system and evidence of serial offending employers that set up and bankrupt companies on a yearly basis to defraud tens of millions of dollars from the tax system.
The union also provided evidence of a practice they call no proprietary limited, no start. This is where workers are coerced into incorporating, forming companies and becoming contract workers in order to get work or keep their jobs. Weve even got employers that are forcing apprentices to form companies. The royal commissions decided not to investigate any of these issues.
Ferguson did not shy away from admitting the damage done to the union by the revelation that one of its organisers, Sammy Manna, had retracted a false statement he made to the commission. A female employer testified that Manna had threatened her and her children. In revenge, Manna claimed that he had had an affair with the woman.
He denied that hed threatened the woman but his response to a bogus allegation was that hed put in an equally bogus one. Hes now facing a perjury charge. I think theres a lot of people in the community that are probably very offended by what he did, but they dont appreciate his predicament he was subject to an allegation thats got no substance, that was published in a newspaper with him not having any right to sue for defamation.
Nobody in the industry, including employers, gives any credence to the allegations made against [Manna]. But now hell suffer the consequences of fabricating a bogus claim.
Ferguson said that the union educated its members about the commission before it came to Sydney: We had about 150 stop-work meetings and spoke to about 25,000 building workers face to face explaining the royal commission, our agenda, the intention of the government and the role of the media. We explained that the media barons would be putting forward scurrilous accusations against the union; we explained that we couldnt sue any of the newspapers for defamation because any accusation in the royal commission can be published. Weve done a lot of publicity work with our own membership.
I think weve also demonstrated to our membership that weve sought to get a genuine investigation. Weve now exhausted our patience; weve failed to get them genuinely interested in our concerns. Weve participated in their system to a certain extent and arising from their failure to listen to our concern theres now going to be a mass safety protest of building workers in Sydney on August 28.
The CFMEU will hold another series of stop-work meetings leading up to the protest, which Ferguson expects up to 10,000 building workers to attend.
From Green Left Weekly, July 17, 2002.
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