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The Federal Election Looms - is a union movement second term agenda possible?

The Federal Election Looms - is a union movement second term agenda possible?

Brian Boyd, VTHC Secretary 17 June 2010

Recently a political commentator musing over Kevin Rudd’s spate of poor opinion poll results said: “Australians are facing the odd situation of really not liking either of the major [Political Party] alternatives….” (AFR 12/6/10).

In this odd context, the ACTU has launched a national political campaign to support the return of the federal ALP, with a mini – version of the 2007 campaign. The focus will be on about 20 marginal seats across the country. The peak national trade union body has told its constituents that it will have a list of key issues it will put to the federal ALP that will need to be ticked off. This so called ‘second – term agenda’ will be put to ALP MPs to comment on. Their expressions of support or otherwise for this union movement agenda will be published.

With the next Federal election possible within the next 3-4 months, the development of this ‘agenda’ is way behind schedule.

The ACTU is sitting on an analysis of the March 2010 ILO Committee of Experts Report that highlights where the Rudd/ Gillard Fair Work Act 2009 carries over WorkChoices - like breaches of ILO conventions.

Two contemporary issues that also underscore the “unfinished business” between the union movement and the current federal government is the ongoing prosecutions of building industry unionists by the ABCC and the severe restrictions of industrial rights (including right of entry) contained in current law.

The latter is illustrated by the recent, pro-employer interference by the Federal IR Minister Julia Gillard in the Dunlop Foams/ NUW Enterprise Agreement.

The employer and the union had struck a more flexible right of entry clause. The Employer Associations reacted swiftly calling on Gillard to go with them to the FWA and re-impose the Work Choices - type restrictions still in the Act.

The dragging of Ark Tribe before the courts in Adelaide this week, because he wouldn’t be secretly interrogated by the ABCC over a jobsite safety dispute and not dob in his fellow workmates back in 2008, is also a Howard –era, back to the future scenario.

In recent times the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) has also been aggressively intervening into the usual day to day disputes that happen in workplaces. If workers stop work or place a ban for even the shortest length of time or consider such an action (e.g. over OHS, bullying, victimisation, breaches of agreements) the FWO threatens workers with extensive fines. The ABCC may have draconian powers but the FWO is acting like the old inspectorate of the Commonwealth Industrial Court in the 1950s and 1960s. Back then such fines eventually led to a national strike over the goaling of Tramways Union Secretary Clarrie O’Shea in 1969.

The Employers Associations used the Dunlop Foams / NUW case to re-enforce their anti-union gains achieved in 2005 WorkChoices legislation. Where the original Enterprise Agreement saw authorised NUW organisers able to meet workers “at all reasonable times” as long as they didn’t “interfere unreasonably with the employers business”, the Employers Associations demanded this be overturned. They argued, as did Minister Gillard, that individual employers had no right to enter into agreements that invited unions into their own premises! The federal government’s submission went back down the WorkChoices track, re-iterating union officials needed permits, had to have meetings at set times, give notice of entry and meet requirements for conduct on site.

On the question of the victimisation of Ark Tribe, the federal IR Minister has said she understood “community concern” and blamed the ABCC’s continued existence on the Howard government, claiming her government had tried to abolish the ABCC as promised before the 2007 election.

She said the current Liberal opposition leader Tony Abbot was holding up the promised legislation in the Senate that would have seen the ABCC swallowed up in FWA.

But as Federal CFMEU Construction Secretary Dave Noonan has said the proposed legislation would still leave the special coercive powers in tact for the building industry within FWA. In other words the FWO would be prosecuting Ark Tribe now, instead of John Lloyd. In addition Minister Gillard has kept up annual federal budget allocations to keep the ABCC fully operational. We only have to be reminded of the heavy handed approach of the FWO recently when back in January the AEU flagged it may ban a new test regime because of the inadequacies of a Federal Government website (“My School”). The DPM Julia Gillard and the FWO went after nearly every school teacher in the country, threatening $6600 individual fines. Some commentators say Gillard “encouraged” the fight, exercising the old conventional political wisdom that fighting unions “is a positive for a labour government.” Tell that to the many hundreds of teachers that will now not turn up to hand out ‘How to Vote’ cards later this year.

Ask the Brumby Victorian government if they have a similar strategy for November.

Many are now saying that public conflict between the labour movement’s political and industrial wings is not as worthwhile as it may have been in the past.

There is also another myth starting to be exposed. That in 2007 Kevin Rudd “swept to power” on a wave of public affection. Rudd was no Bob Hawke in 2007. He had only k’od Kim Beazley in November 2006. He was not all that well-known. John Howard was well known. Ten years of reducing workers rights had finally caught up with him.

Should really be 2007 defined as the year John Howard was thrown out of office, not the year Kevin Rudd was enthusiastically put in the PM’s job. The sooner some of the spin doctors wake up to this the better.

The union movement is well aware of the threat to it from an Abbott Liberal government. We know him well.

But the ALP MPs in Canberra should not take anything for granted.