The High Court has unanimously dismissed the legal challenge to Labor’s Administration of the CFMEU. But the legal decision does not make it right. It only confirms what CFMEU members and other unionists already knew—bad laws need to be broken.
The only option to fight Administration is an industrial and political campaign of rank-and-file resistance by CFMEU members and the building industry group of unions to win back membership control of the union.
That fight can’t be put off any longer; waiting for the High Court decision has stalled the rank-and-file action needed to beat Administration for months.
The Administration has used that time to tighten its grip on the union. It’s issued a Strategic Plan for control of the union until 2028. It’s placed the ACT branch under Administration and removed the ACT acting secretary, Michael Hiscox, for daring to criticise Administration stooge Zach Smith’s proposal for greater national control of the CFMEU. And it’s employing new organisers of “good character” in NSW.
Now we can expect that Administration will move even further to try to consolidate its control. Administrator Mark Irving has already issued a statement to insist that the elected former leaders of the CFMEU, “will not be coming back.”
We need to be clear that there is no way to work with the Administration. The CFMEU delegates of the Queensland-Northern Territory Divisional Branch have already carried a motion calling for Zach Smith to resign from his Administration positions. Every workplace and branch should carry that same resolution.
But most importantly, workplace and mass meetings need to be called immediately to show the Labor government that the CFMEU will fight and to plan an industrial campaign to beat Administration. The first step should be to call another national strike.
Administration can be beaten
Even if the court had decided against Administration, the Labor government would just have passed further legislation to make it legal. Strike action was always going to be needed.
The national strike action last year showed what kind of campaign could win. After the two national stopwork rallies in August and September, the bosses’ Financial Review moaned that Labor’s Administration “is not going to plan” and admitted that the effort to take control of the union was “struggling to make headway”.
The CFMEU is central to the economy, with big infrastructure projects in every state. Neither the government nor the bosses will want to see their projects held up by strikes. The CFMEU has enough industrial power itself to defeat Administration and stand up to the construction bosses. With support from the ETU, the plumbers’ union, the construction division of the AMWU and the MUA, a defiant industrial campaign has the power to force the Labor government to back down.
Labor and the bosses want a tame-cat union. But it’s defiant industrial action that has kept building workers safe at work. It’s industrial action that can keep the union strong and under rank-and-file control.
Not fighting Administration now means surrendering to its rotten agenda.
By Ian Rintoul
