It is frustrating to see Julia Gillard DPM on Insiders this morning repeat Howard’s mantra about ˜tough cop on the beat against building unionists and Reith’s and Abbott’s and Andrews and Hockey’s…and the Master Builders.
1. The DPM provides no evidence based analysis of why continuing the most repressive penal system against unionists for legitimately withdrawing their labour in the OECD continues into the second year of a Rudd Labor government.
Such analysis exposes the big lie – that for well over a decade building union industrial action has not been a problem because workers are at work over 99% of work-time and we are going into a recession with less industry!
2. That a fair IR system does not have policing, penalising, cops threats of enforcing the law, inquisitions, denial of human rights, restrictions on left-wing political and militant opinions all as a 1984 system of fear regime against building unionists.
What is wanted is a system of preventing and negotiating and settling grievances and disputes with skilled professional industry practioners, the employers and unions and with the right to strike.
But for building and construction unions the first year of Labor sees Industrial Relations remains in Lewis Carroll Land and 1984.
The DPM says she keeps the ABCC not withstanding the ACTU TV ad playing against the discrimination.
Michelle Grattan November 22, 2008 Age reported:
FORMER senior federal court judge Rod Madgwick has condemned the controversial workplace law for construction workers in a union TV advertisement… putting pressure on the Federal Government over the Australian Building and Construction Commission with unionist Noel Washington due in court on December 2 for refusing to attend the ABCC to answer questions. Washington, from the Construction, Forestry, Mining Union faces jail.
In the advertisement, authorised by ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence, Mr Madgwick says: “Unfortunately, not all Australian workers are equal before the law. Construction workers are subject to industrial laws such as we’ve never before seen in this country.
“They can be fined up to $22,000 for stopping work and jailed for up to six months for refusing to answer questions about a workplace meeting”.
Labor promised before the election that it would keep the commission until early 2010, then roll it into its new industrial umpire in 2010.
Polling done by Essential Research to test the effect of the earlier union advertising campaign has found that 73 per cent agree the Government should, after 2010, get rid of the special powers over building workers, giving them the same rights as other workers.
This was up from 65 per cent in May, before the initial advertising. Twenty seven per cent believe special laws should be retained for the building industry — down from 35 per cent in May — in the polling, which was conducted online.
While some seven in 10 agreed in the October and May polls that construction workers should not be treated differently from other workers, those who “strongly agreed” increased from 25 per cent to 34 per cent.
CFMEU Construction national secretary Dave Noonan said the WorkChoices era would not be over as long as the commission and separate laws for building workers remained.’
The DPM accepts the false ideology that the Cole Commission established by Tony Abbott with ˜First the verdict – to get the building unions, and then – the trial or inquisition.
Apart from right-wing ALP politics against the left CFMEU as the main reason, there are no public policy justifications.
The DPM, herself a lawyer, replays the old legal trick of Howard and the lawyers in his Cabinet to first politically demonise legitimate actions, here the building unions responding with legitimate industrial action to unlawful actions of employers.
Next is labelling that action as ˜inappropriate” and then sliding over to say ˜inappropriate action ought to be made ˜unlawful”.
Then with Senate power Howard did that with the Building Industry Act and the ABCC.
The DPM uses this still to crack down on so-called past and continuing ‘inappropriateness’ and ˜unlawfulness on building unionists. This has no validity and no industrial fairness.
The ABCC is the state power intervening into industrial relations for the corporation, after a dispute has settled, to go back with a draconian inquisition into the ‘inappropriate behaviour now ˜unlawful.
The DPM urges this regime as the ‘cop on the beat’ to be ‘changed into the new 2010 regime.
This is 1984.
I warn to beware of lawyers and their definitions in labour law and deciding what is lawful and what is not and having a law and order campaign that serves the interests of the corporate world.
The devil is in the lawyers’ detail.
It is wonderful to have Julia Gillard (who I supported against Kim Beazley) as DPM and in all of her Ministerial responsibilities and am pleased with Kevin, Wayne and Lindsay she is prudently and responsibly responding to the capitalist economic crisis and one day she will be a great PM, but in such crisis times we have to question strongly the details of their judgement.
Here the continued state repression against building workers¦the 1984 era has to stop now.
We wait with interest the new Fair Work bill. The DPM said on Insiders she is sweeping away WorkChoices we shall see the details on Tuesday.
Turns out as PM changes name but not coercive powers – a betrayal of building and construction workers.
2012 is cruch time for lobbying this Parliament to abolish the ABCC coercive powers.
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