Cole Commission looked in the wrong places

Last week a further "secret volume" of the Cole Commission Report into 
the building industry was released by the Workplace Relations Minister Tony 
Abbott. Using the Report as ammunition, Mr Abbott also released draft 
legislation that aimed directly at crushing the Construction, Forestry, 
Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). Guardian reporter Jules Andrews 
spoke to Phil Davey, Media Officer of the Construction Union's NSW Branch 
about the Report, and its possible implications for building workers.

Jules Andrews: A so-called "secret volume" of the Cole Commission 
Report was released last week. Was there anything revealed that surprised 
the CFMEU?

Phil Davey: The only real surprise is that the secret report doesn't 
seem to contain the "smoking gun" which the Federal Government was 
inferring existed. In fact, the content appears to be quite the opposite — 
an admission by the Royal Commissioner that he has been forced into hyping 
certain behaviours in order to justify his findings.

JA: Much of the hype contains allegations that union organisers and 
officials have committed criminal acts such as assault, intimidation, 
damaging property, extortion, lying under oath and falsifying court 
documents. But then a bit further on in the "secret volume" Commissioner 
Cole says, "most of the matters investigated by the commission 'might' have 
constituted a breach of civil or criminal law'".

PD: It's all delightfully vague of course and that's part of the 
agenda of the Royal Commission. From our point of the view the Commission 
was a con job from the beginning.

JA: The construction industry is massive, worth $40 billion in Australia, 
and according to Abbott the whole industry is absolutely riddled with 
rorting, corruption. That is how he justified spending over $60 million on 
the Cole Commission. Yet, at the end of the day they were only able to 
point the finger at just 23 individuals, and six months later there still 
hasn't been a single charge laid.

PD: Yeah, that indicates they were looking for the corruption in all 
the wrong places!

I can't speak for other States but in NSW the adverse findings against our 
officials were the industrial equivalent of jay walking. They tended to be 
things like when arriving on a building site the union official failed to 
notify the builder that he had arrived on site — hardly the most dire 
criminal behaviour!

We're very confident that ultimately the same results will come out here as 
in the Giles Royal Commission: despite all the damaging headlines, at the 
end of all the exaggerating on the part of the Federal Government, we're 
very confident that no union official will be found guilty of anything of 
any substance whatsoever.

At the end of the day if anyone's charged with anything of any substance 
I'll be very surprised.

JA: At the same time the report uncovered only five incidents where 
building companies had intimidated workers, provided false evidence to the 
Commission or engaged in unlawful commercial affairs.

PD: That illustrates better than anything the absurdity of the show 
trial that was the Cole Royal Commission.

There are massive problems in the building industry — there is money 
laundering, organised criminal elements, there is serial trafficking of 
illegal immigrants and the use of those immigrants as strike breakers, 
there is systemic flouting of occupational health and safety laws, rorting, 
tax evasion — all of which the national crime authority estimates amounts 
to billions of dollars a year. But unfortunately none of this was 
investigated by the Royal Commission, demonstrating very vividly that they 
were not interested at any time in fixing the very real problems in the 
building industry.

Because if they were, they would have looked seriously at the evidence that 
we presented in copious detail on over 200 companies. None of that evidence 
was looked at by the Royal Commission, which demonstrates that it was only 
ever a political con job of the clumsiest type.

JA: Tony Abbott has now released draft legislation which is clearly 
aimed at crushing the CFMEU. Outlawing pattern bargaining is a key 
component.

PD: The assault on pattern bargaining demonstrates better than 
almost anything else the extreme ideological obsessiveness of this 
government. In many instances the Liberal Party's own constituency — the 
business lobby —quite likes pattern bargaining because it gives building 
companies a measure of certainty that competitors are paying the same rates 
and utilising the same standards as they are in their agreements with the 
union.

The Howard Government has this zealous obsession with what they call the 
"magic of the marketplace", what we would call "the law of the jungle" — 
the farcical obsession with individual enterprise bargaining that pits 
company against company as much as it pits worker against worker.

It simply doesn't work in the building industry and that's why, arguably, 
the Federal Government hasn't been able to get any traction with its very 
regular appeals to the business community and the big builders to take on 
the CFMEU.

In our experience many builders, perhaps most builders like the certainty 
that pattern bargaining provides.

JA: The Government is also going to legislate for secret ballots 
before strikes.

PD: Secret ballots will be used as mechanism to slow down the will 
of the workers through creating a bureaucracy in the workplace where one 
need not exist. A simple show of hands at a workplace meeting will be 
replaced by weeks of process and miles of red tape, all at considerable 
expense.

Another part of the legislation is demanding union organisers obtain 
written permission before they can enter a building site.

When you add all these things together as well as the slated Building 
Industry Commission — a so-called "task-force on steroids" — it will 
seriously impact on this union's ability to organise its constituency.

JA: Minster Abbott says a new safety commissioner will monitor 
workplace injuries. It has been suggested that the commission will be used 
as a device to stamp out industrial disputes dressed up as safety issues.

PD: Even the most rabid employer must acknowledge that the union 
plays a useful role as a watchdog for safety. We do our level best to 
protect our members from shonky builders who every day attempt to maximise 
profit by cutting corners on safety.

The union's role in safety is well acknowledged within the industry. It 
performs the function more effectively than current government regulatory 
agencies do.

So the concern here is a very real one if a union official's right of entry 
is restricted over spurious arguments about misuse of OH&S [occupational 
health and safety] legislation.

Simply put, the inevitable result of any systemic or legislative attack on 
our right to protect our members' safety at work will result in more 
building workers being killed on the job.

The powers-that-be in this country resent the fact that working people in 
the building industry have been successful in gaining good wages and 
conditions in comparison to other blue-collar workers through successful 
and militant unionism.

The fundamental perception amongst the elites that run the Liberal Party is 
that blue-collar building workers shouldn't be paid above average wages.

So over the last two years we've had an attempt to bleed us in the courts 
through a star-chamber Royal Commission, which has cost millions for the 
union to defend itself.

JA: But at the same time you still have your usual union business, 
and daily struggles in the workplace to attend to.

PD: It is perhaps the CFMEU's greatest achievement over the last 18 
months that the union has not allowed itself to become distracted by this 
show-trial and to focus on the main game, which in NSW and across the 
country is to deliver a 36-hour week and substantial improvements in 
quality of life for rank and file building workers.

The members responded to our efforts with industrial militancy in the 
workplace and in NSW now there are 500 enterprise bargaining agreements 
signed and delivering a 36-hour week to tens of thousands of building 
workers. That is a real achievement in spite of the distractions of the 
Royal Commission and the federal legislative agenda.

JA: The legislation is expected to face a difficult passage in the 
Senate, and the Howard Government is holding talks with the Democrats. Will 
the CFMEU also be holding talks with the Democrats?

PD: Our national leadership is talking with the Democrats and the 
other minor parties in the Senate. We're very hopeful that at the end of 
the day sanity will prevail, and that the minor parties will understand 
that there is no reason to treat the building industry differently to other 
industries just because it has a militant and effective trade union 
covering the industry.

Building workers haven't believed the hype and misinformation being fed 
systemically to them by the powers that be during the last 18 months in 
this country and we're hopeful that the minor parties in the Senate will 
also see through the nonsense and recognise that militant trade unionism is 
not what is retarding the development of the building industry.

Rather it is those things that the CFMEU has identified: the abuse of 
illegal immigrants, things like tax evasion, things like money laundering -
- they're the things that hold up productivity in the building industry. 
Many more days a year are lost due to industrial accidents than industrial 
action or strike action.

All the international studies show that the Australian building industry is 
the second most productive on the planet.

That's something that all building workers can be proud of and there is 
room within our industry for a militant trade union.