[Update (August 23) : The union has been placed in administration. Further, ‘The Administrator of the CFMEU’s Construction Division, Mark Irving KC, says 11 people have been removed from their paid employment as a result of the administration [and] 270 officers have been removed from voluntary positions.’ In response, the ETU has decided to withhold more than $1 million in political donations to the ALP for the next federal election (and to re-direct funds to any potential legal challenge). It will also reportedly ‘refuse to pay ACTU affiliation fees while the CFMEU is suspended, and debate its ongoing ACTU affiliation’. See also : A Labor factional war is dictating Australia’s foreign policy, GRundle, Crikey, August 22, 2004.]
Mostly for my own benefit (and maybe a reader — even two).
Since Building Bad dropped in July with tales of crime and corruption, the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees’ Union (CFMEU) has been in some trouble. Widely-regarded as being among the more successful of #ausunions, as a result of these, ah, difficulties, it appears as though the CFMEU is soon to be placed under government administration. Hence today it was announced that: ‘All branches of the militant CFMEU could be forced into administration from as early as next week after Labor and the Coalition struck a deal to pass the stalled legislation, turning on the Greens for failing to rule out accepting future political donations from the beleaguered union.’ But wait!: ‘The CFMEU is receiving legal advice from Maurice Blackburn lawyer Josh Bornstein and is expected to decide by the end of the week whether to challenge the new laws in the High Court. Already, the United Firefighters Union and Electrical Trades Union have signalled they could back a CFMEU legal challenge.’
I’m not a law-talking guy, so I dunno if the challenge has legs — we’ll find out soon enough (see also : A bill to kill a union: What is actually in the government’s CFMEU legislation, Eko, Red & Black Notes, August 9, 2024).
While it’s unsurprising that the Coalition has backed the deconstruction of the union, so bad are relations between the union and Labor following its legal response that the national secretary, Zach Smith, has even raised the possibility of the CFMEU disaffiliating from the party. Disaffiliation is of course an exceptionally rare occurrence but one which, despite the millions of dollars the union pours into the party, may actually be welcomed by it. Certainly, disaffiliation would have some important ramifications for the factions which run the show (The Labor government would be a very different beast if this factional war went the other way, GRundle, Crikey, August 12, 2024):
Labor now is a machine for the representation of capital, plugged into high finance through industry superannuation funds and the wider capital-science nexus. From Gillard to now, it has given us a capital-friendly arbitration body and made strikes illegal. Now it is going to permanently gut a union that developed militant tactics to represent its members, precisely because genuine worker representation had been made virtually illegal, by Labor.
At this stage, among other unions it’s unclear the degree of their opposition to the imposition of government control over the CFMEU. While on the one hand a number of employers have already moved to cut pay and undermine conditions negotiated as part of the CFMEU’s 2024 EBA campaign, on the other hand, the ACTU — which suspended the CFMEU’s membership of the peak body immediately after the scandal broke — appears to have welcomed the decision to place the union under government administration.
Having successfully flexed its considerable financial, industrial and political muscle in order to overturn a ban on duck-hunting in Victoria last year, the Building Industry Group may now have to embark upon another, even more militant campaign to save its largest and most powerful member.
See also : ‘Serious threat’: The controversial laws targeting the CFMEU, explained, AAP/SBS, August 20, 2024 | About the crisis at the CFMEU, Sarah Missen and Sam Wallman, Overland, July 19, 2024.
