Shoddy boss put under the hammer

Vanguard October 2013 p. 8
Nick G.

On the first Tuesday after the federal election, and knowing that a revitalised ABCC would be breathing down their necks, Adelaide construction workers defiantly and happily made a nuisance of themselves by disrupting an auction of building plant and equipment.

“What am I bid for this….”

“A week’s wages to feed the kids!”

“Two week’s annual leave!”

“Three week’s long service leave!”

By putting in claims against a shonky boss trying to sell off plant and equipment they highlighted the ease with building bosses use bankruptcy to evade legal obligations to the workers.  Bankruptcy and the secret salting away of assets to steal tens of thousands of dollars from workers and their dependents.

A total of 32 workers are owed an average of $18,000 each in varying amounts ranging from $440 to over $49,000.

This is one grubby little boss alright.

His Ferro Con company folded after one of its workers, Brett Fitsch, was crushed to death by a falling steel beam at the Adelaide Desalination site. 

Paul Maione, Director of Ferro Con, was charged in the Industrial Court with breaching workplace safety laws on the second to last day of a two year investigative period. He declared that he would plead guilty, but in the meantime had taken Ferro Con into voluntary liquidation, thus reducing his liability, and started another company, using many of the same workers, putting them under the same pressures, to do similar work. 

The new company, Q Structures Pty Ltd, is also in trouble, hence Maione’s fire sale.

He wants to get some cash in hand and stash it away beyond the reach of his worker-creditors.

On the day of the auction, Maione was in WA overseeing the delivery of steel to his part of the Perth Airport job.

The disruption of the auction was a magnificent sight with a sea of Eureka flags replacing the traditional bidders’ cards.

After a while, the coppers turned up and, to no-one’s surprise, acted to protect the thief rather than the victims of theft.

Obviously aware of the irony of the situation, one cop pleaded with a worker, “You understand, don’t you mate?’

A very firm working class negative was the reply.

Court action will be taken to try and force Maione and Q Constructions to make good the monetary value of wages and other entitlements owed to workers.  But workers won’t make the mistake of relaying on court action alone.

Shaking up a shoddy boss by their own direct action is setting a fine example to all workers in the post-election era.
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Capitalist press report and video here