If they want to smash unionism in Australia, the Liberals know that they have to go after the strongest first. Thatcher did it with the miners in the ’80s; Howard botched an attempt with the wharfies in 1998. This time around, construction workers and their unions are targeted.
One of the federal government’s weapons of choice is the Building and Construction Industry Code, which will be considered by the Senate in coming weeks. The code is a major offensive against construction workers. The revamped construction industry secret police – the Australian Building and Construction Commission – will have the job of enforcing it.
The code will mandate that bosses who tender for government projects strike dozens of conditions out of enterprise agreements on all their jobs. According to Troy Gray, Victorian state secretary of the electricians’ union (ETU), electricians in the commercial construction industry will lose 76 current conditions. The situation is the same for CFMEU members.
Under the code, affected companies will be banned from employing non-working shop stewards. In an industry where 211 workers died between 2007 and 2012, this will mean more deaths. How will a shop steward who is working all day, on a site with hundreds of other workers, have time to walk the job and raise concerns about safety? They won’t; it’s impossible. That’s the point. Big builders want to get their jobs done cheaply and quickly, cutting corners and putting lives at risk. They don’t want to be hassled by unions.
“If unchallenged, the code will make workplaces more dangerous”, the state secretary of the CFMEU (Victoria), John Setka, told Red Flag. “Abbott and his mates are kidding themselves if they think we’re going to let their anti-worker ideology put the lives of building workers at risk.”
The use of subcontractors is also expected to spiral under the code. Unions will be prevented from bargaining for clauses that set the terms of subcontractors. Bosses will be able to ignore enterprise agreements entirely and employ workers through labor hire companies on sub-par wages and conditions.
State governments have also tried using legislation to knock out construction workers’ conditions. The High Court recently overturned a Federal Court ruling which found that a Victorian building code was unenforceable – meaning the Victorian code is back in play.
Like the federal code, the Victorian rules require any company wanting state-funded work to remove “union-friendly” clauses in its agreements. “Union-friendly” conditions include the right to wear union stickers at work, to have a say over how people are employed (casual or full time), how they are paid and how many hours they work. Significantly, it also scraps unions’ ability to win ratios that dictate how many apprentices a company has to hire for every qualified tradesperson they employ.
Setka says the union will fight. “They believe that if they break the CFMEU, they break a major pillar of the union movement. But we’ve resisted successive attempts by all sides of politics and industry players to destroy us.” Beating these codes will be a major test of union strength in the coming months.