Sue Bolton
July 5 is now a significant day in the history of Australia's labour movement. It was the day on which 107 Western Australian construction workers began being served with writs for taking strike action in February on the Leighton Kumagai-run Perth to Mandurah rail construction project.
The writs were initiated by the Howard government's Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) and could result in fines of $28,600 for each worker. The workers' union, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), is not being sued.
These workers weren't involved in any violent conduct. They weren't involved in any fraud. All they did was take strike action to have their union delegate, Peter Ballard, reinstated. Ballard had earned the wrath of the Leighton Kumagai management by standing up for workers who were being subjected to many unsafe practices on the job.
A landmark dispute
State secretary of the NSW CFMEU Andrew Ferguson told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly: "This is a landmark dispute for the labour movement. We're now seeing very oppressive laws being used to intimidate and bully rank-and-file workers and break union organisation.
"We're seeing the threat of massive fines being used, the threat of interrogation by the ABCC, and the threat of fines and jail sentences for workers who won't participate in this interrogation. These are the types of laws that many of us in this country have protested against when they've been used in Third World countries to undermine labour standards."
Ferguson said there are now more than 150 officers employed by the ABCC and it is engaging many more to increase its attacks on building industry unions, and on the wages and conditions of building workers. When one of the 107 WA construction workers, Mal Peters, accompanied by his wife, Bernadette, visited the eastern states last month to publicise the dispute, ABCC officers tried to establish whether union officials in Sydney gave a right of entry notice to bring the Peters to a work site and whether the meetings extended beyond the specified lunch break.
The ABCC has numerous cases against the union movement pending and many investigations in progress, and its predecessor, the Building Industry Taskforce, still has litigation underway.
"There will be a lot more action against the CFMEU and other building unions in future", Ferguson said.
"The immediate task is to ensure that building workers are educated about these oppressive laws", he explained. "That's our first and most immediate responsibility, to work in our own backyard, then to work with the other building unions to educate the whole building industry work force, then to work with progressives, and then with all wings of the trade union movement and peak bodies to educate the labour force.
"Many people in the union movement outside the building industry are unaware of these laws. The main focus has so far been on Work Choices. We haven't had the opportunity to get any traction amongst the broader union movement about the very serious laws that are being used to attack workers and civil liberties."
The organisation of mass protests is very important, Ferguson said. "We are hoping that [the laws targeting building workers] will be on the agenda of the November 30 [union protests] across the country.
Building solidarity
"We're not expecting instant results, but we are building up considerable solidarity for this campaign. We are going to organise more national tours of workers from WA and the issue has been raised with the union movement internationally to broaden the attack on the Howard government."
A couple of CFMEU officials will travel to Germany to talk with the German construction unions and with Leighton's parent company Hochtief, which owns a huge slab of the Australian construction industry, including Leighton Holdings, John Holland and Theiss. Hochtief has signed an agreement with the German construction union committing all the companies it owns to observe core International Labour Organisation standards, such as collective bargaining. The ILO has said that Australia's industrial laws are in contravention of these standards.
Ferguson told GLW that the CFMEU has met with the Council for Civil Liberties to better understand the civil liberties dimension to their campaign. "Many of the laws being used in the building industry represent a very serious threat to civil liberties", he said. "The coercive powers are greater than those available to police enforcement agencies dealing with serious crime. Inevitably there will be some sort of confrontation with people refusing to be intimidated or interrogated in these secret sessions and the ABCC will be facing the issue of whether or not to jail those unionists."
The 107 construction workers have their first appearance in court on August 29. They will be joined by 40 metalworkers also facing fines of $28,600 over an unrelated dispute.
Victorian CFMEU state secretary Martin Kingham told GLW: "It's absolutely important that we rally and support the 107 workers. The whole focus of the federal government's attacks in our industry is to intimidate workers out of taking direct industrial action.
"The only way that we can support those workers when they take the action and get fines is to pay the fines for them. That means raising money so that we can show that the rest of the trade union movement is behind building workers and will not allow them to be stripped of their houses and assets as a result of being involved in union activity."
Union alliances
Confronting such repressive legislation, some unions are investigating alliances with other unions. The Victorian executives of the CFMEU and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) are planning a meeting to re-establish a political and industrial alliance.
Kingham explained that the construction workers' situation is different from that of the metalworkers. The metalworkers are involved in a dispute with the company and often, when a dispute is resolved, all legal action will be dropped as part of the dispute resolution. However, the WA construction workers' dispute with Leighton was resolved, yet the ABCC kept investigating the workers and several months later served the writs.
August 29 is starting to develop as a national day of solidarity with the WA workers facing fines. Approximately 107 building sites across Australia will hold lunch-time meetings to discuss the solidarity campaign, and a delegation of rank-and-file unionists and officials will travel from each state to Perth to join the solidarity march and rally there.
In NSW, the CFMEU is organising a solidarity rally on August 29. Unions NSW has endorsed the rally and will encourage its affiliates to attend it. "We want to see a full cross-section of union flags and workers from different industries participate", Ferguson said. "We're hoping to have nurses, teachers, wharfies and political activists participate in our community campaign.
"On the same day in Sydney we'll be having 50 lunch-time meetings on building sites to engage with thousands of building workers, and to raise financial support and understanding."
The Victorian unions are also discussing a solidarity rally on August 29, with the details to be confirmed soon. The Victorian AMWU state council passed a resolution to work with the CFMEU towards solidarity action on August 29.
For more information, visit the 107 solidarity campaign website at .