Construction workers come out fighting against Labor

Around the country, tens of thousands of the workers who build, tear down and rebuild our cities were out in the streets on 27 August. For a few hours, the workers who make our cities brought them to a halt.

The protests were in response to the federal government’s extraordinary announcement on 23 August that 281 office-bearers of the Construction and General Division of the CFMEU would be removed from their elected positions, and all of the union’s legal powers handed over to an administrator.

So, from 8:30am that day, a barrister with zero industry experience on a salary of $640,000 (plus allowances) is the main construction union, legally speaking. As previously detailed in Red Flag, the administrator is empowered to sack organisers, dismiss delegates, dispose of property, rewrite the rules and expel members—all while being fully indemnified against any finding of wrongdoing, and with precisely zero accountability to any member of the union.

This draconian, anti-democratic move got the response it deserved on Tuesday: tens of thousands of construction workers shutting down worksites and taking to the streets in defence of their union, their democratic rights and their conditions. It’s a fight in which the whole working class has a stake.

Melbourne saw a colossal march, estimated by police at 50,000. There were big contingents from both city and suburban jobs, and from the other construction unions (Electrical Trades, Plumbers, Manufacturing Workers). Members of the Rail Tram and Bus Union, the Firefighters and the Maritime Union were also visible.

Former Builders Labourers’ Federation and CFMEU official Ralph Edwards spoke to the crowd about the charge of “illegal industrial action”. The media, the administrator and the Labor government have recited this accusation—both as a justification for imposing a government-appointed administrator and as a threat against anyone stopping work for the protests.

“We have been accused of illegal industrial action”, Edwards said: “Make no mistake—I plead guilty!” Edwards took us through a quick history of “illegal industrial action”, encompassing the “stop work to stop the war” protests against the Vietnam War, strikes to save Medicare and strikes and rallies to win safety and dignity on the job.

The new Victorian enterprise agreement was a recurring theme. Some companies that had previously indicated they would sign now seem to be getting cold feet, emboldened by the government’s moves against the CFMEU. This jeopardises the 5 percent annual pay rise written into the agreement, as well as crucial clauses that had been ruled as “prohibited content” under the previous Liberal government (for instance, clauses mandating consultation with the union over the use of sub-contractors). ETU secretary Troy Gray stressed the importance of “Campaign 1,000” to get a thousand Victorian companies signed on to the CFMEU agreement in the coming year.

In Brisbane, around 12,000 construction workers and supporters rallied in the city centre. There was plenty of feeling against Labor, with one widely-shared placard comparing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to Hitler.

Along with Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather and speakers from the Maritime Union and the Rail Tram and Bus Union (and a well-received speech from Socialist Alternative’s Ella Gutteridge), the Brisbane rally was addressed by a striking worker from the Cross River Rail project. These workers are heroes. They are seven weeks into a strike for a CFMEU agreement that would dramatically lift wages, conditions and safety compared to the miserable, loophole-filled enterprise agreement signed by the Australian Workers Union on this major project. There was one death and dozens of hospitalisations on this job last summer due to a woefully inadequate heat policy agreed by the AWU.

This important dispute seems to be the only supposed “crime” that the Queensland branch of the CFMEU is accused of. That striking and picketing have been used to justify the imposition of an unelected administrator on the Queensland branch is telling. It shows that the CFMEU is being targeted at least as much for being industrially effective as it is for allegedly harbouring criminal gangs.

In Sydney, well over 10,000 construction workers staged a spirited, rowdy rally outside the state parliament, chanting against Labor and Albanese and intermittently surging towards the parliament building. In Canberra, a smaller crowd of 300 heard from BLF veteran and CFMEU delegate Dusty Miller, voting unanimously for his motion to disaffiliate the union from Labor. In Adelaide, around 1,000 heard from CFMEU and other union speakers (and booed as a list of unions not in attendance was read out). In Perth, a crowd of several thousand marched the length of the CBD after hearing from a string of rank-and-file construction workers.

“The only way out is through”, observed Edwards at one point in his speech in Melbourne. Yesterday’s rallies were a terrific show of strength and of fighting spirit. Plenty more will be needed over the coming months (and years) if construction workers are to avoid the federal administration becoming a trash fire for their wages, conditions and industrial strength.

So what’s next? Federal and state Labor governments have pulled the trigger on the most dramatic attack on a union in decades. And if anything, Labor seems keen to double down on the politics of CFMEU-bashing ahead of the next election. Labor has reacted with fury to the Greens’ defence of the CFMEU, Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt attacking Max Chandler Mather’s correct observation that Labor’s attack on the CFMEU is “an attack not just on construction workers but on every worker in this country because Labor has set a dangerous precedent”.

One placard in Brisbane compared the government’s actions to one of the most notorious anti-union figures in the English-speaking world, declaring, “Thatcher would be proud”. As if revelling in the scorn of unionised workers, Albanese used an afternoon press conference to rehash one of Thatcher’s most famous anti-union lines—declaring that “the government is not for turning”. Albanese clearly believes that adopting the role of head-kicker of working-class people and their organisations is clever politics. There’s no comfort for workers in Labor.

Then there are the administrators. The government has been careful to appoint supposedly “union-friendly” administrators. But what kind of unionism are they “friendly” towards?

The Victorian administrator is former National Tertiary Education Union secretary Grahame McCulloch, notorious for talking left while acting right. One typical example from his decades-long CV as a union official was one of his last efforts, in 2018, when he rammed through a new enterprise agreement at Murdoch University in West Australia.

McCulloch’s deal at Murdoch resulted in serious losses on workload, lower redundancy payouts, weaker misconduct clauses, reduced facilities for casuals, weaker clauses governing conversion to ongoing, the loss of “reasonable time” for union delegates, weaker controls management changing employment policies, plus a sub-inflation pay rise. None of this stopped McCulloch’s team declaring it a “win”. With “union-friendly” administrators like this, any effective union is likely to soon be in serious trouble.

Federal administrator Mark Irving, being a lawyer rather than a union official, hasn’t signed off on such appalling enterprise agreements. But Irving’s stated commitment to ensuring that the CFMEU operates within the narrow limits of Labor’s Fair Work Act—one of the most restrictive anti-strike legal regimes in the world—means a much less effective and democratic union.

Real union democracy is based on workers having the freedom to debate and act on the most important thing a union can do—withhold labour. It is based on a revival of industrial action, not ever-tighter restrictions on it. This is a vital part of ridding any union of corruption and criminal associations.

As Red Flag has previously argued, not all the allegations of ruthless capitalist gangs (i.e. criminal outfits) occupying union positions in the CFMEU can be easily dismissed. CFMEU national secretary Zach Smith and many others have acknowledged this. But meekly submitting to unjust, anti-democratic restrictions on the right to strike imposed by a high-paid lawyer on $600,000 is pointing in the exact opposite direction to what’s needed for any real cleaning of the house.

The proof of this is the Health Services Union. One of the main claims to fame of federal administrator Mark Irving is his work clearing corrupt officials out of the HSU a bit over a decade ago. But this did nothing ato challenge the union’s passive industrial practice and, therefore, did nothing to revive any real democracy. So it’s no surprise to find that the HSU today is once again facing serious allegations of corruption, to the tune of several million dollars.

What about the bosses? Some are champing at the bit to take advantage of Labor’s attack on the union, to start carving up union power and union-won conditions. The day after federal Labor put the CFMEU into administration, the front page of the Australian Financial Review celebrated with the headline: “CFMEU neutered”. Inside, long-time building industry bosses celebrated: “I saw the BLF deregistered in 1986—this pales to nothing in comparison to the impact of this”, declared one. Another executive hailed “an extraordinary juncture ... we’ve been living in darkness for years and now there seems to be some light”.

Interestingly, though, some construction industry bosses seem hesitant to take advantage of this coming-of-the-light courtesy of Labor. In mid-August, the Australian Financial Review carried a sharp analysis by columnist James Thomson, pointing out that, regardless of any legislation, the state of the industry gives the CFMEU a lot of leverage: “With interest costs as high as they’ve been in 13 years, with labour shortages rife across the construction sector, and with large swathes of the east coast property industry still in catch-up mode after two years of bad weather, the costs associated with holding a delayed project are as high as they’ve been in a generation”.

Constant delays to projects can be disastrous, especially among smaller and mid-sized building companies that rely on debt to finance their next project and on progress payments throughout the project to pay off that debt. When federal and state Labor governments deregistered the BLF in 1986, they had to pay billions of dollars to compensate construction companies hit by industrial disruptions, especially in Victoria, where the BLF survived for years as a rebel union. There is no such cash offer this time around.

So some builders and developers with long memories (Thomson focuses on Sydney-based apartment developer Mirvac, which has recently signed on to the new NSW CFMEU pattern agreement) will recognise that the union still has the potential to cause them serious damage. This incentivises these companies not to go for the union’s jugular—for instance, by trying to cancel or vary enterprise agreements—as long as the CFMEU can demonstrate enough industrial strength to delay major projects.

This somewhat cautious approach by some bosses is reflected in the half-way-house approach of several industry executives who said in late August that they plan to vary their enterprise agreements with the CFMEU. Their key target isn’t so much the wages and conditions in the agreement, though. Instead, they want to scrap the contracting clause, which requires lead contractors to only sign up sub-contractors who also pay the CFMEU-negotiated rates.

This approach will be especially attractive to employers in civil construction (i.e., roads, rail and tunnels rather than apartments, office buildings and shopping centres), as it would allow most of the work to be done on typically cut-price terms agreed by the AWU. This is one of the crucial issues at stake in the major dispute at Brisbane’s Cross River Rail project.

To cut a long story short: construction industry employers will have to consider how much disruption they will cop if they move to terminate, vary or renegotiate enterprise agreements, or if they try to cut out the CFMEU altogether. CFMEU members and officials have plenty of cards to play in this respect. So despite the federal government and its highly-paid flunkies, construction workers still have the potential to shape the outcomes of federal administration through their industrial strength.

Yesterday’s protests were a vital and encouraging first blow by construction workers. Plenty more will be needed. This includes all of the factors present in yesterday’s terrific protests—legally protected industrial action like the Cross River Rail dispute, unprotected (“illegal”) industrial action like yesterday’s stoppage, and political damage for Labor as a result of its disgraceful attack on the CFMEU.