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| Issue No 58 | |
16 June 2000 |
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 In Defence of RalliesThe Cost of Activism
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Interview After the Gold RushInterview with Peter Lewis
Firstly, there has been boom conditions in the building industry in the lead up to the Olympics. Are you expecting that to continue into the post Olympic period? No, there is going to be a downturn after July 1t, the present boom is being also fuelled by a pre GST building boom as a lot of people try and avoid the increase in the cost of materials. So after July 1 there is going to be a downturn and obviously as all the Olympic work is completed that will further add to the downturn. It's been the biggest building boom I have witnessed for 20 years and in fact any of our union officials with longer service than myself say it's unprecedented. But after September there will be a significant downturn in work for building workers in Sydney and NSW. What are the gains that building workers have made over that boom period? We made a pretty conscious decision not to force up the wage rates and conditions of employment excessively, because for every gain we make during the recession there is going to be non-union contractors under-cutting union companies that pay. So we in fact try to moderate the outcomes because we are very conscious of the long term issues of what happens during recessions. That is also re-emphasised in a labour market increasingly deregulated, where you have got non-union contractors with very low rates of pay undercutting union companies. On the gains we've made - we've certainly increased wage rates significantly. Building workers in Sydney have certainly got the highest wage rates in the country. Our wage rates are $150 per week ahead of Melbourne, even though they have recently introduced a 36 hour week there which is financially worth about $20 bucks a week. Once the boom ends where do the building workers go? What happens to your members who at the moment are working on the big city jobs? Tradespeople have got better prospects of employment than unskilled builders' labourers, so they are the less impacted. Builders' labourers that are less skilled simply get displaced in the industry and go into other industries or unemployment. The building industry is very much boom or bust, or feast or famine - it's always been like that, this time around it appears that the State Government is going to be making a significant contribution post Olympics to some very major infrastructure projects, so that will moderate the cycle to a certain extent. But nevertheless we anticipate a 25 per cent downturn to building works, with in particular, unskilled labourers being displaced from the industry. That translates to thousands of building workers in Sydney are losing employment. And do you have strategies for those blokes? We have an employment company that is called "Building Workers Assistance Centre" that plays a role in seeking to place unemployed workers in work in the industry if possible or in work outside the industry. We've also got a training company called "Comet Training" which provides assistance to members that want to be re-trained for other industries. So we do provide those extra services that other type of unions are not in a position to currently provide. In many ways you guys have been trail blazers in precarious employment because your members have always been precarious. As other parts of the labour market move into more precarious models, they are going to be looking at what you have already done. One is the mobile long service leave idea. Can you give an outline of how long that has been going and how that has succeeded for building workers? It came into effect in 1974 as a product of a campaign by all the building unions and building workers to get long service leave based on their service to the industry rather than a particular employer. They might work 15 years for 100 different companies and they obtain long service leave benefits. I suspect that this is the best long service scheme in the world. Even when they are unemployed - if they are medically unfit they get long service leave benefits - and there wouldn't be any scheme in the world where unemployed, and if you are sick, you get a long service leave credit. And we have introduced a number of other reforms recently to fine tune and improve the scheme and it is certainly the best of any long service leave schemes in the building industry across the country. And you think that model can work in other industries? I think it definitely can. For example, one would think that it could apply in the cleaning industry or the fruit picking industry where there is a lot of casual employment. And we are hopeful that the scheme can spread because a lot of workers are being casualised and are not getting benefits. On the Federal scene it looks like you have managed to withstand Reith's Third Wave, which would have made a lot of the practices that you guys use illegal. Are you expecting more heat out of the Federal arena over the next few months? I think there will be a sharp focus on what happens in Victoria. Hopefully that will be managed in a way that doesn't provoke Reith and perhaps lose the support of the Democrats in terms of the issue of pattern bargaining. Are you optimistic that that is not going to happen? I am very hopeful that that will be the outcome in the Victorian manufacturing campaign. Pattern bargaining is a very effective way to unite workers and avoid the worst features of enterprise bargaining which is "divide and rule" for workers, and I am hopeful that the Victorian unions will run a successful campaign which results for metal workers in particular in Victoria. In terms of rank and file involvement you seem to have a very active membership base compared to a lot of other unions. What is the secret to keeping the membership actively engaged? I think we do a lot of face-to-face work with union officials and workers. You don't find our union officials sitting in the union office during the day. They come back here between 3 pm and 5pm and their job is to actually go to a workplace and confront the employer and deal with workplace issues. We have regular delegates meetings and we have regular meetings at workplaces - large and small - on a daily basis. Is safety still the biggest issue? It is certainly one of the biggest issues. It is a physically arduous, dangerous industry. The workers see the union extremely active on safety issues and therefore they identify the union as being an important part of their welfare. A lot of them know of workers that have been killed or seriously injured, and they know that without the union, it would be a far more dangerous industry. I think the perception of building workers is that the union is in fact the central force in the industry for workplace safety. It is not the government or the employers. There is no doubt in my mind that workers regard the union as the central driving force in terms of safety. There is also no doubt that our bargaining capacity is greater on larger jobs than smaller jobs, and that larger concentrations of workers are easier to organise than small companies that have got family employed are more difficult to organise. But I organise in geographical areas and if you have got a geographical area of small jobs, you go to all those small jobs in that geographical area and that is probably a good way to force the union to tackle the smaller jobs, as opposed to phone calls coming into the union office from bigger jobs that keep you running to those bigger jobs all the time. I understand Che Guevara is your political hero. What is it about his life that inspired you? I don't know if Che Guevara is my political hero. but I'm certainly inspired by people like Che Guevara. I've got in fact a son named after Camilo Cienfuegos, who is a Cuban revolutionary. He was one of the revolutionaries that left from South America to go to Cuba and played a key role in the revolutionary forces that overthrew the Batista government. So, particularly around 20 years ago as a university student I identified a lot of those revolutionary forces, and regard Che Guevara as an idealist who has inspired generations of radicals across the world. Where do you reckon the next revolution is going to come from? Possibly very close to Australia in Indonesia. Finally, you yourself are from a political family. Both your brothers are Ministers and your dad was a Minister - or is that your brother's an MP? Have you got a desire to go into politics at any stage? No. Job satisfaction is pretty important. I get enormous job satisfaction out of union work. In particular, working with workers from a non-English speaking background. I've got no interest or intention of going into politics. Never ever? Never, never!
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