Brian Boyd
Excerpts from a report by Brian Boyd, Victorian Trades Hall Council Secretary, for Victorian Building Industry Unions.
(Above: Baillieu, another budgie-smuggling bastard of the boss class)
The Victorian Baillieu Government is now well known for treating its own public sector workforce with disrespect and even contempt.
Not content with mistreatment of the very people who are employed to deliver State government services, the Baillieu government has now declared war on the State’s private sector construction workforce. The Victorian Building Unions and their members are to be targeted for being too successful in negotiating, through the legal EBA process, decent wages and conditions. Baillieu wants to slash these gains on behalf of the Master Builders and big developers.
Back in April the Victorian Government created the Construction Code Compliance Unit (CCCU) of the Department of Treasury and Finance and published an updated Victorian Code for the building and construction industry. It has appointed well know union basher Niger Hadgkiss to be the unit director. Hadgkiss assisted the Cole Royal Commission into the national building industry over 10 years ago.
The Royal Commission led to no corruption charges against any building union officials, yet its so called ‘findings’ were used by the Howard government to create some of the most anti-union legislation enacted in Australia.
An Interim Building Industry Taskforce (IBIT) and eventually the infamous ABCC were created after the Royal Commission in order to harass building workers and their unions. Nigel Hadgkiss worked for both bodies… Now Nigel Hadgkiss is ‘back in town’. Over the years he has made no secret he hates the Victorian building unions the most. It is believed that Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbot is advising Ted Baillieu on IR strategies. Abbott created the ABCC. The building unions are well aware of Tony Abbott’s antipathy towards them. Obviously the conservative political forces want to increase the conflict once again in the nation’s construction industry.
International multinationals have huge resources and infrastructure projects on the drawing board. Labour costs cut into their big profit margins, that’s why their friends in politics and the media continually beat up the IR laws debate.
Not only do these interests of capital want to reduce wages and conditions but also want the unfettered right to import thousands of overseas workers to carry out as much of the nation’s construction work as possible.
The employers’ obsession with IR laws often centres around the “right of entry” of union organisers, especially on project sites. The developers want to restrict a union’s ability to organise and educate workers about their rights and the history of wage rates and other entitlements, never mind how to improve on them. Already there is one major resource site in Western Australia where the overseas visa workers are being paid only 50% of the established going rate for that type of work.
Premier Baillieu has been ‘banging on’ about construction costs ever since he took office. He has called on the federal government to have a national enquiry into the issue. The Federal government is entertaining the idea the idea of ‘providing’ special treatment for big projects.
The history of improving wages and conditions for all construction workers over time, is often through organising on such projects. Gains on the bigger projects trickle down and spread out to the wider industry, via the mobility of workforce over time. The employers are well aware of how expectations of wages and conditions are transferred around the industry. Obviously, there are now concentrated moves to thwart this well established practice.
The role of new Victorian mini-ABCC, i.e., the CCCU (Nigel Hadgkiss’ Construction Code Compliance Unit of the Department of Treasury and Finance) will be part of this wider anti-worker strategy. Any employer who negotiates outside the dictates of the new Victorian Code will be put on a Baillieu ‘blacklist’, in terms of not being allowed to bid for future government contracts. Additionally, workers on sites who wear union insignia such as hard-hat stickers or badges or cause flags to be flown, can also cause the ‘blacklist’ to be activated!
The work of the Construction Code Compliance Unit of the Department of Treasury and Finance and its associated Code started officially on 1st July, 2012. To mark the occasion the Victorian Building Industry unions called a mass rally and march on Wednesday 4 July, 2012. Building workers from all over Victoria were called into Melbourne to let Premier Baillieu and his union-busting puppet Nigel Hadgkiss know their wage cutting plans were not on.
The building unions and their members know they are in for a long fight. The 4 July rally is only the beginning of a broader defence strategy.
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