The Registered Organisations Commission is bad news for union members

Dirty deals done dirt cheap – that’s how the Coalition got the Registered Organisations Commission and Australian Building and Construction Commission bills through parliament in the last weeks of November.

Predictably, the eight Senate cross-benchers, with whom the unions frequently – and futilely – pleaded “to listen to the workers’ voices”, listened only to the call of self-interest and voted for both bills.

Since Tony Abbott first introduced these bills, the focus has been squarely on the revival of the ABCC, but the establishment of the Registered Organisations Commission is equally a stab in the heart of unionism. Unions are already covered by the Corporations Act, and lately by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission – which is pursuing the CFMEU. Now the Coalition has imposed a third tier of union oversight.

While the debate is framed around “union corruption”, it is actually union governance – how the unions run, who they give their money to, involvement in the superannuation funds – that is firmly in the Coalition’s sight. It was a key focus of the Heydon Royal Commission, which collected volumes and volumes of the unions’ financial records. Without the time or resources to trawl through all of the documents, the paperwork was always destined for the government and Registered Organisations Commission.

Labor opposed the latest version of the commission, but the party has given its support to the basic purpose behind the Registered Organisation laws – to increase sanctions against unions. In 2012, after the health union’s scandal, Labor brought in increased penalties and financial management standards under Fair Work. Then, during the Heydon Royal Commission, the ALP promised to take a “tough stand”, with greater penalties and the use of ASIC instead of Fair Work, as the regulator.

The Coalition instead proposed extensive ASIC-equivalent powers in a new regulatory body, the Registered Organisations Commission. The new body has markedly more extensive investigative powers than Fair Work, the power to lay criminal charges and impose financial penalties harsher than those applicable to businesses under the Corporations Act.

The Registered Organisations Commission will target ordinary unionists and can only deter greater participation by members. Take, for example, an office cleaner, a rank and file representative on the executive council of United Voice. Hers is an unpaid role, but like thousands of other volunteer union officials, she could face fines of up to $204,000 for refusing to comply with an order of the Fair Work Commission or a court. For a minor breach like being late with preparing the union’s paperwork, elected officials could be fined $17,000 each. Unions can be fined more than $1 million.

None of this stops the real corruption staining the union movement – the deals done by unions like the SDA to cut the wages and conditions of its members working in major corporations across the country. It’s only through strong unions with active members, who can challenge such practices, who can take industrial action to enforce health and safety standards and enterprise agreements, that the unions will truly act in their members’ interests. This type of activity is exactly what the ABCC and Registered Organisations Commission were dreamed up to destroy.

Some of the blame for these measures passing the parliament must lie at the feet of the unions themselves. Where was the campaign? From the start, the union response has been limited to Facebook memes, petitioning and lobbying the cross bench. Far too late came limited industrial action on a few building sites, well after the government had locked in cross bench support.

Turnbull has won this round, but re-electing Labor is not the solution. It’s going to be up to us to take up the fight.