LaborNET

  Ask Neale

  Tool of the Week

Interview

Political Witch Hunt

Interview with Peter Lewis

CFMEU national secretary John Sutton on the mooted Royal Commission and what is really needed to clean up the building industry

	CFMEU's John Sutton

********************

The Royal Commission now appears to be a fait accompli. What do you think it will achieve?

Probably very little, except waste a great deal of public money. The building industry is one of the most enquired into industries in this country. There has been a series of Royal Commissions and enquiries down the years into the building industry.

I don't believe there is the objective basis for this enquiry, and it has a heavy tone of a political witch-hunt. So if you are looking at sound public policy formulations to emerge, there is some considerable doubt in mind that that is possible, given the politicised nature of what we are likely to get.

Given that it will take place, what would be investigated if it was a genuine enquiry?

We would like to see a lot of emphasis on the rooting out of crooked behaviour; criminal activities - especially: the area of taxation avoidance which is rampant in the industry; the use of illegal migrant labour which is very widespread; the use of phoenix companies to dodge tax and other entitlements that are due to workers. A whole range of issues like that do require some substantial attack by a government that was serious about cleaning out fraudulent and criminal practices. However, I have got severe doubts as to whether the terms of reference will properly focus on those sorts of serious policy areas that are in need of attention.

Just on the corruption issue - you yourself have raised the issue of corruption. Why is a Royal Commission not the way to go to deal with those issues if they are so serious?

Because a Royal Commission called by Tony Abbott and the Liberal Government that he comes from is highly likely to be a politicised forum in which trade unions and union issues get very little balanced treatment.

We have a strong view that the tackling of corruption and criminal elements is a matter that is best handled by the police and other government authorities. It is not just a belief we hold, it is something we have carried through in practice by supplying, to the NSW Police, considerable evidence about crooked activities that we have uncovered.

We have also written to the Police Commissioners in at least two States - both NSW and Western Australia - and have indicated that we will provide maximum cooperation in their endeavours to clean up any crooked activities they come across in the industry. And in fact, we are more than willing to supply with any information that comes our way.

So, we have a strong view that the police, whether they be State or Federal police, are the proper persons to be tackling criminality, because generally they do so in a non-politicised environment.

You lived through the Gyles Royal Commission. What lessons should that teach us?

The Gyles Royal Commission went for nearly two years. The lawyers of Sydney made a motza. They had a veritable picnic at the expense of the NSW taxpayer. That Royal Commission cost nearly $23 million of taxpayer's money. It cost the union movement in the order of $2.8 million to defend themselves through that Enquiry, and it did not really prove a conducive environment to turn up sound policy prescriptions that would advance the building industry.

It was an adversarial forum and it was not in our view a good expenditure of monies. In other words, the taxpayer did not get value for money out of that forum, and there are better ways to go about achieving policy changes.

It set out to find corruption in the building industry amongst unions. Were any unions charged out of Gyles?

Another thing we learned out of Gyles and that Royal Commission is that you end up with a media circus - or trial by media is probably another way to put it. Our union's name was literally belted from pillar to post, day in day out, for over two years, but when the time came for the Royal Commissioner to give his final verdict, he was forced - and I say "forced" because he was no friend of the building unions - he was forced to admit that there was no evidence of widespread or serious corruption on the part of the full time union officials. Likewise in respect of violence, he said that there was no serious evidence of systematic violence or activity of that kind on the part of the full time union officials.

So, after a vast expenditure of monies, our names were essentially cleared. There were some union officials - a small number - two or three - that they then sought to prosecute. Those prosecutions were long and costly and each and every one of them collapsed and no official of our union, or any of the building unions was convicted of anything arising out of the Gyles Royal Commission.

Let's talk about thuggery. The unions are accused of thuggish tactics. What is the experience of your typical building worker working on a building site like? Is there violence in that workplace?

The building industry is obviously a hard industry. It is an industry of males. It is hard physical labour and most of the employers that successfully survive in the building industry do so because they have got a hard edge to them - and so it is with the workforce. You can't be a pushover in the building industry as a worker or whatever capacity you are in because you will just get pushed around and treated badly in quite an aggressive environment.

And so it is with the unions in the building industry. We have to fight hard for every gain that we achieve and things might not be as polite or as genteel as they may be in some other work environments - in white-collar environments or the public service. That is not to say that most building workers, or most employers, or certainly the building unions are involved in thuggish behaviour. The vast majority of people who make up the building industry are decent, hard working Australians. They are not interested in thuggish or any kind of bully-boy behaviour. And as much as the media might like to portray some sort of bully-boy image that is not the reality for most people who work in the construction industry.

Do you feel there is sometimes a double standard in the focus that is placed on a bit of jostling on a picket line, compared to the total ignoring of death and serious injuries on building sites?

Absolutely. There is a horrendous toll of workers being maimed, injured for life and killed in the building industry. It is a very difficult and arduous environment to work in. Somehow we are meant to just watch our members get killed and not take any sort of emotive position about it. Well, building workers do get emotional about their safety and about the safety of their workmates. And so does the union. We get emotional about these matters.

I know the media would like us to be dispassionate and have some cold, calculated view of it all, but we are flesh and blood human beings obviously, and people react with passion when things are manifestly unjust, and there is a heap of injustices in the building industry. Not just safety.

The amount of avoidance of workers entitlement that goes on in the industry - the amount of shoddy treatment of workers is manifold. The union only often gets to the tip of the iceberg in breaking up some of the rorts and dealing with some of the abject injustices in the building industry. It is riddled with injustices, and I don't think you will see in any Tony Abbott Royal Commission the kind of injustices that I am talking about, where tens, probably hundreds of millions of dollars of workers' entitlements are robbed annually from them, with vast amounts of taxes not remitted to the Tax Office, where rorts are just widespread.

We have tried to bring to the attention of this government the many serious abuses going on in the industry - whether they be in the area of tax; whether it be illegal immigrant labour. Nearly always our cries and calls to the government fall on deaf ears, and I fear it will again prove so in the Royal Commission, because I fear the terms of reference will essentially be directed at attacking the building unions, and essentially at attacking industrial relations practices that Tony Abbott and his ilk don't find acceptable.

Finally, are you concerned that the building unions could jeopardise a Beazley Labor Government?

It is certainly not our goal to jeopardise a Beazley Labor Government. We obviously want to see the current Federal Coalition removed from office. They have presided over the most unjust industrial laws that have been witnessed in our country in the last 100 years. They have in fact helped bring about a very combative industrial relations environment, which is spawning some of the current excesses that have been noted in the media lately. But for a whole range of reasons we want to see this Coalition Government removed. Its social policies are deplorable. It is presiding over an Australia that is becoming more and more an unjust society, so for a whole range of reasons we want to see that government replaced.

It is certainly not our intention to embarrass or put the Labor Government in any difficulty, and certainly not the union leadership's position to in any way advocate violent behaviour or stupid behaviour that can jeopardise the good name of most Australian trade unionists.

The important thing here is to keep things in perspective. Most trade unionists and most trade union officials go about their business in a responsible way, and so it is with the CFMEU. None of us are perfect, and at times emotions do flair and things happen that we would regret later, but let us keep it in perspective. The number of incidents that Tony Abbott is trying to point to are very limited and few and far between, compared to the injustices that are perpetrated on workers, day in day out in the workplace in my industry and in many other industries.

In fact, it is only the prevalence of strong unions in the building industry that tempers, or curbs, some of the injustices that that industry, of its own motion naturally does throw up. Without a strong CFMEU one shudders to think how unfair and uncivilised the building industry would be.

   Visit the CFMEU

  View entire issue - print all of the articles!

  Issue 103 contents

»	Survey Shows Majority Support for Unions
»	Howard's Union Stooge in Hot Water
»	Unions Cash in on Big Brother
»	Big Boys Bully Over Della Compo Changes
»	Where's WorkCover? Safety Prosecutions Drop Off
»	Telstra's Ultimatum: Stay Away From Kim
»	Workers Win Stake in New Bank
»	Hours Test Case Gets Green Light
»	St John of God Workers Pray for Justice
»	Five-Star Action From Security Guards
»	Howard Plans to Stop the Vote
»	Rio Outrage Heads for Court
»	Nurses To Fight For Pay
»	One Hundred Reasons to Save Aussie Post
»	Rail Track Sell-Off Part of Privatisation Push
»	Coles Myer Abandons Regional Jobs
»	Qld Wage Rise Still Not Enough
»	Activists Notebook

»	The Soapbox
»	The Locker Room
»	Trades Hall
»	Tool Shed

»	Problems with Hunter Decision
»	A Lost Cause
»	High Farce

Notice Board
- Check out the latest events

Latest Issue

View entire latest issue
- print all of the articles!

Previous Issues

Subject index

Search all issues

© 1999-2000 Labor Council of NSW

LaborNET is a resource for the labour movement provided by the Labor Council of NSW

[ Privacy Statement | Disclaimer | Credits ]

LaborNET is proudly created, designed and programmed by Social Change Online for the Labor Council of NSW