Tuesday’s strike and demonstration by NSW CFMEU rank and file and union supporters, in defiance of the Labor-appointed administrator, is just what the campaign against administration needed.
The administrator and the Fair Work commission is embarking on a new round of intimidation and witch-hunts. The CFMEU administrator, Mark Irving, has announced new inquiries into the NSW and Queensland branches.
It is becoming clearer by the day that administration does not mean “business as usual” for the CFMEU. The administrator is flexing his institutional muscles. Industrial Relations Minister Murray Watt has said, “It’s still pretty early days in this administration process” that will run for “a minimum” of three years.
The administrator stopped ACT CFMEU acting secretary Michael Hiscox from speaking to the media before the ACT election that Labor won in October.
The Fair Work Ombudsman is also trawling for information to bring charges for coercion against union delegates and officials, announcing that it has recently started 42 new investigations into the CFMEU.
The Fair Work Commission is also drawing up guidelines that would make “undermining the administrator” or “not following a lawful direction of the administrator” subject to civil penalties.
Meanwhile a letter from four construction employer organisations to Murray Watt, Minister for Employment, has exposed the real agenda behind the attack on the CFMEU. The employers thank Labor for putting the construction division of the union into administration—but go on to call on the government to ban five clauses from enterprise bargaining agreements.
They want Labor to ban clauses that require all subcontractors to be “engaged on terms no less favourable than the terms of the Head Contractor” (commonly known as ‘jump-up’ clauses), and to ban any union say regarding the “selection and use of contractors or mandate consultation about the use of such contractors”.
The bosses are out to smash the “business as usual” approach to enterprise bargaining and weaken the union, and Albanese’s Labor government is helping them.
The High Court challenge to the administration laws will start in Canberra on 10 December. Even if the challenge is successful, the government will just use Parliament to change the laws to ensure administration will continue. That’s what Albanese did over refugee law against indefinite detention of refugees just last week.
Regardless of the High Court, it is the industrial power of the CFMEU and supporting unions like the MUA and ETU that can defeat administration and win back rank and file control of the CFMEU.
Unions supporting the CFMEU (including ETU, plumbers, MUA, AMWU, RTBU and others) are set to meet in Canberra on 9 December to hold a “Trade Unions for Democracy Summit” to discuss forming a breakaway alternative to the ACTU. The Summit coincides with the 10 December start of the High Court challenge.
The summit will also consider running “union political candidates” against Labor in the federal election in 2025.
The collaboration of the ACTU leadership with Labor’s administration of the ACTU is a betrayal of fundamental union principles and must be condemned. But what’s needed to defeat administration is not just opposition to the ACTU but a strategy based on militant industrial action, and a willingness to defy the anti-strike laws that shackle the union movement.
A rally has been called for Canberra on 10 December, when the High Court hearing starts. The 10 December needs to become nationwide stopwork action.
The discussion we need at the Canberra Workers Summit, and on every job, is about how we mobilise the industrial power of workers that can beat administration, Labor and the bosses.
