On average one worker is killed and thousands seriously injured every week of every year in the building and construction industry. Most of these deaths and injuries are avoidable. The Construction Division of the CFMEU and its members have been fined tens of millions of dollars in the courts since the onslaught begun by the Howard government and the introduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). Their crime? Taking action to defend workplace health and safety and ensure workers receive their legal entitlements.
Taken over and forced into administration by the Albanese government, CFMEU workers and their officials are being hounded, spied on, and subjected to intimidation by the state, including the Australian Federal Police. The administrators are using the union’s money to persecute its members.
Although Labor officially disbanded the ABCC and transferred most of its vicious anti-union, anti-worker powers to the Fair Work Act Commission, the remaining powers are still being wielded as a political weapon aimed at destroying militant trade unionism. The criminalisation of legitimate trade union activity and use of the courts to bleed unions of their funds remains in place, albeit with reduced penalties.
Union officials attempting to recruit members, speak to their members or organise in the workplace are still being prosecuted. Workers who take industrial action to protect their wages and working conditions or refuse to work in unsafe conditions are pursued.
The ABCC used its draconian powers to call workers in for secret interrogation sessions. Failure to attend or refusal to inform on who said what at a union meeting was punishable by huge fines and up to six months jail.
The ABCC was set up by the Howard government and retained in a modified form by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments under a new name. As well as having drained CFMEU members’ money, it also wasted millions of dollars a year of taxpayers’ money and cost the court system millions more.
The Albanese Labor government placed the Construction and General Division of the union into administration and appointed Mark Irving KC as Administrator on 23 August 2024 for up to five years.
The framework giving Irving incredible powers and absolute control over the union was put in place by former Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.
One of Irving’s first actions was to sack paid union officials in Queensland, NSW, and Victoria and dismantle elected positions and the democratic bodies of the union.
Retrieved from full article: AUSTRALIA: Police State Attack on Unions – Labor Today
