Issue No 24 | 30 July 1999 | |
NewsHoward Ministers, Employment Advocate in the Dock
Peter Reith and his Employment Advocate are facing legal action under his own anti-union laws to stop them interfering in the construction industry.
The country's largest construction union, the CFMEU, has launched the major legal challenge to the Federal Government's industrial relations agenda for the construction industry. The CFMEU has named two Federal Ministers, Mr. Reith and Mr. Fahey, as well as the Employment Advocate Mr. Hamberger, as respondents to Federal Court proceedings claiming breaches of the Workplace Relations Act and the Trade Practices Act. The CFMEU alleges that the Government's Code of Practice for the Construction Industry amounts to unlawful interference in the process of reaching and maintaining agreements with employers. Since the Code came into effect, the Government has made it a condition for working on federally funded projects that all aspects of the Code, including it's prescriptive, anti-union industrial relations measures, be complied with. The union also alleges that the Employment Advocate's role of enforcing the Code is beyond it's statutory power. John Sutton, National Secretary of the CFMEU's powerful Construction Division says contractors that are employing our members are being told they must tow the Government's line on industrial relations or miss out on government work. "We have thousands of perfectly legal collective bargaining agreements which have been certified by the Commission," Sutton says. "If they happen to have clauses the Government doesn't like, the company party to the agreement can be banned from government contracts. Our members miss out on work as a result." Sutton says workers are sick to death of hearing the tired old libertarian rhetoric about the evils of so-called "third party interference" coming from precisely the same people who are using the Government's commercial clout to tell the industry what is and isn't acceptable in agreement making. "Mr Reith's attempts to provoke employers in the industry has failed," he says. "Now we see the use of the government's purchasing power as a lever. "This is public money the government is spending. It's not a slush fund for union busters. The union claims that the Commonwealth has breached of the Workplace Relations Act and that the Code amounts to a secondary boycott, misuse of market power and unconscionable conduct. It seeks injunctions restraining the Commonwealth, the two Ministers and the Employment Advocate together with damages and penalties. "We are confident we can put some rotten legislation to good use," Sutton says.
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