Union protests compulsory interrogation

Many building sites around Sydney closed early on Friday, October 30, as hundreds of workers took to the streets in industrial action over the South Australian trial of Ark Tribe, who faces six months imprisonment or a $22,000 fine over not attending an Australian Building and Construction Commissioner (ABCC) interview.

The ABCC has coercive powers to interview industry workers under oath and refer them to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions for failing to comply.

CFMEU NSW Secretary Andrew Ferguson, who addressed the rally, said: “Workers in no other industry face the kind of unfair laws that building workers are subjected to.”

“The Rudd Government must do everything in its power to see through its commitment to abolish the ABCC and repeal these discriminatory laws,” Ferguson said.

The ABCC is empowered by the Australian Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005, enacted by the Howard Government. The Rudd Government will evolve the ABCC to the Fair Work inspectorate by early next year through amended legislation, which it claims fulfils an election promise.

A spokesperson for the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, said “This legislation does not satisfy the CFMEU but the Government is acting in the national interest and believes we have got the balance right.”

The government is acting on a report by former Federal Court Judge, Murray Wilcox, who said that while he sympathised with building industry workers being subjected to extraordinary powers of investigation, a high level of “industrial unlawfulness” still existed.

“It would be inadvisable not to empower… compulsory interrogation. The reality is that, without such a power, some types of contravention would be almost impossible to prove,” Wilcox’s report said.

The ABCC says its powers are not unique, but similar to other regulatory agencies such as the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and the Australian Taxation Office.

For the CFMEU, who marched from Trades Hall to the ABCC demanding more legislative reform, continued industrial action is likely. A spokesperson, Nathan Brown, called the ABCC (and the Fair Work inspectorate) “anti-union”. “They don’t investigate bosses who don’t pay their builders,” he said.

The industrial paradigm remains a legacy of the Howard Government, and a further split between the once powerful ALP- trade union alliance.

– By Matt Khoury