Super funds used to bail out corporate crisis
Anna Pha
In the coming weeks superannuation funds will be reporting record losses for the 2008-09 financial year, far greater than those of the previous year. Around $200 billion of workers’ retirement savings have been wiped, and many workers forced to put off retirement, while retirees return to work. The forecast average loss is around 13 percent for “balanced funds”. This statistical average masks the far larger losses of 20, 30, 50 percent or more that many workers have suffered, depending on how their savings were invested. While workers’ savings were haemorrhaging, the financial institutions were using the super funds to help bail themselves and the corporate sector out of the crisis.
The introduction of the compulsory superannuation guarantee around 20 years ago had a number of aims. These include winding back the publicly funded aged pension; shifting responsibility onto the individual for self-provision during retirement; privatising the provision of retirement income; and providing the private sector with a large source of investment capital.
From the finance sector’s perspective the growth of superannuation funds has been very successful in providing investment capital, presently at around $1.1 trillion and with a guaranteed continuous income stream of close to nine percent of all wages paid.
The banks, insurance companies and their various subsidiaries have the use of the super funds that they control to buy shares in themselves and thus prop up and manipulate their own share prices. A conflict of interest if ever there was one! This demonstrates clearly that there is no guarantee that any fund can or does always make investments with the best interests of the workers’ and their savings in mind.
Superannuation funds have literally saved the bacon of many corporations and possibly some of the banks and insurance companies.
In the past year, a number of the largest corporations listed on the Australian stock market have raised a record $70 billion through share issues and other means. They have used this money to wind back debt and purchase bargain-basement priced takeovers that can be found during an economic crisis. Much of this money came from superannuation funds.
Without this injection of super savings and faced with banks refusing to roll over debt, many private companies would have been in dire straights. Their collapse would have resulted in further losses to super funds. This highlights the contradictions facing workers, the fate of their savings so integrally tied to that of the big corporations which exploit them in the workplace and then profit from their superannuation savings.
Transfer of risk
When a person deposits money into a savings account or fixed term deposit the bank guarantees payment of a certain rate of interest and repayment of the sum in full. The bank takes the risk, lending, investing and speculating with that money. The bank carries any losses.
Superannuation transfers all of the risk onto the backs of workers. They are not guaranteed one cent of income and they are not guaranteed that the money they deposit will be there when they come to withdraw it. The financial institutions invest and speculate with the money for their own interests. For the privilege of risking superannuation savings, they have the hide to charge crippling fees.
The financial system is making a killing making huge profits from control of workers’ savings, with workers carrying all the risk.
Industry funds, which are not-for-profit and have trade union as well as employer representation on their boards, consistently outperform the other funds. Industry funds generally do not charge the hefty fees and commissions that the private funds impose. While they do to some extent determine the types of investment, they do not have control over day-to-day investments which is done through custodians.
Super savings are used in such unethical practices as lending shares for a fee to big business figures to manipulate voting at AGMs and get their nominees elected to directorships on company boards. They are subjected to highly speculative practices on stock and futures markets, and in currency trading, etc.
The private funds managers help themselves to outrageous entry fees on deposits, exit fees on withdrawals, a range of commissions, fees for financial planners and other “services”. Some charge entry fees of four or six percent on money paid into a fund, then they help themselves to another one or two percent for financial planning, a bit more for management and so on.
The government has become concerned about hefty fees eating into savings, fearing that super funds will fall short of their objective of replacing the aged pension. Other concerns have been raised about the rising cost of the special tax concessions relating to superannuation savings. These concessions were designed to encourage people to put more money into their funds by such means as salary sacrifice. The rich are rorting them to the hilt, using them to extract tax-free income from their investments in their own personal super funds.
Industry experts estimate that a 60-year-old retiree with $300,000 in a private pension fund drawing an income of $37,000 would run out of payments within 11 years and then be fully dependent on the aged pension. How many workers will have that sort of money in their fund by retirement!
Tax experts estimate that it would be cheaper for the government to make the aged pension universally available than funding the superannuation tax rorts for the rich.
There are other problems with the superannuation system. The ACTU has called for the Fair Work Ombudsman to be given the powers to investigate superannuation underpayments – as many as one third of employees may be affected by employers who do not meet their obligations.
The government has a number of reviews underway, investigating the huge fees and commissions charged by the finance industry, examining the system of tax concessions and looking at how to reduce the number of people receiving the aged pension. None of them have the objective of protecting workers’ savings.
The privatisation of the provision of retirement income is a big boon for the corporate and finance sectors, but for workers it is not working. It does not and cannot provide security in retirement for all workers. The only way to do that is through the centralised public provision of a basic pension by government. The aged pension should be universally available and sustained at a level that retirees can live with dignity and enjoy a good standard of living, which they have every right to having paid taxes throughout their working lives.
This was government policy during the 1970s when the process of phasing out means testing had begun. Many of today’s retirees made their plans in the belief they would be entitled to the pension.
Superannuation should be over and above a universal aged pension. Workers should have the option of making contributions to a national superannuation fund, run by and guaranteed by the state. This would be a defined benefit scheme, providing retirees with a guaranteed fortnightly income for the rest of their life. Similar schemes were the norm before the process of privatisation of retirement incomes began.
A national superannuation fund would be of additional benefit to the community, with its funds invested in socially desirable projects such as the building and provision of public housing, public infrastructure, health, education, aged care and other services. Industry and private superannuation funds should be subject to greater regulatory direction governing their investments, including a requirement to invest a certain percentage in government guaranteed public sector projects.
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Friday, 17 July 2009
Un-Fair Pay Commission
Savage attack on low paid
Anna Pha
On July 9, the Fair Pay Commission imposed a real wage reduction on more than 1.3 million of Australia’s lowest paid workers. The wage decision directly hits those who rely on minimum award rates of pay. The key consideration in its decision was corporate profits. The Commission opted for what it called “a profit-led recovery”, trotting out the usual employer mythology that wage rises cause unemployment. The reality is that by imposing a real wage reduction, the Commission, and the employers whose bidding it does, will drive the economy deeper into recession at the cost of thousands upon thousands more jobs.
“The decision means ordinary working Australians and their families are bearing the brunt of an economic downturn they did not cause,” said ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence said.
“Many workers have already lost their jobs, had their hours cut and now more than a million families are facing a pay freeze despite rising living costs,” Mr Lawrence said. “The costs of rent, food, medicines, education and utilities have all risen in the past year and families need a pay rise to keep up.”
The Commission flatly rejected the ACTU’s claim for a modest $21 a week rise (less than 56 cents per hour), and instituted a wage freeze. Trade unions were taken by surprise, and thousands of workers, desperately struggling to make ends meet had their hopes of a few extra dollars to meet rising prices dashed.
Employers on the other hand are jubilant. They got what the asked for: no wage rise.
The Rudd Labor government asked the Commission to make a “considered” minimum wage increase, without specifying any amount. This made it easy for the Commission to do its considering. When the decision was handed down, Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard said she was “disappointed” but that the real wage reduction was “a decision we have to accept”.
She then went on to defend the Commission’s decision with the comments, “… I understand and the government understands that the Fair Pay Commission confronted the most difficult minimum wages setting environment for many decades that any industrial authority has had to confront.”
The real wage reduction is not surprising considering the membership of the Howard government’s appointees on the Commission. It includes such leading lights of the New Right as Professor Ian Harper and Judith Sloane. They always have an excuse to oppose wage rises, regardless of the state of the economy.
Profits first
The Commission in its decision raised the question of a “wage-led or profit-led recovery”, and chose the profit-led option.
“For many businesses, the decline in aggregate demand has led to significantly lower profitability and changes in business practices,” the Commission said and then in a blind leap of faith embarked on a course that will reduce demand even further. The failure to deliver a $21 a week wage rise to the lowest paid workers will have the effect of reducing demand by more than $1 billion.
Just this month there have been increases in the price of petrol, electricity, water, gas and health services in a number of states. That leaves less money to pay for everything else, and without a wage rise, fewer goods and services will be purchased.
How many jobs will that cost? Thousands more than any jobs that might have been lost because of a small wage rise.
Employers are sacking workers because people cannot afford to buy the goods and services they produce. More workers will be sacked or have their wages and hours cut as a result of this minimum wage decision.
But the narrow-sighted, economic rationalist Commission cynically argues that freezing wages will protect the jobs of low paid workers!
More job losses
The Commission ignores the reason why aggregate demand for goods and services has declined – the gap between what workers are paid and the value of what they produce. The ACTU in its submission pointed out that the profit share of income had increased to record levels in 2008. The Commission itself admits this and makes the point that company gross operating profits increased by 19 percent in the first half of 2008.
This was at the expense of the share of income being paid in wages. It is the build up of this gap between the income from production siphoned off in profits and what is left for workers’ wages that results in economic crisis and recession.
That gap can be narrowed and the economy stimulated by increasing wages. The reduction of real wages undermines the government’s stimulatory measures as well as causing hardship to the workers and their families affected.
All workers affected
The decision is not just a blow for low paid workers. It creates an environment of wage restraint. Unions will find it more difficult arguing for higher wages in enterprise bargaining, unable to seek an increase in line with the minimum rate.
The decision also means that the unemployed are even less likely to get an increase in unemployment benefits. Over the past two to three decades of economic rationalist policies, successive governments have deliberately sought to widen the gap between unemployment benefits and the minimum wage. In line with this trend, the Rudd government refused to raise unemployment benefits when it recently increased aged and other pensions.
The aim is to keep unemployment benefits as far as possible below the poverty line, to force the jobless in sheer desperation to accept any work, regardless of how appalling the working conditions and wages are. Time and again capitalist economists claim the minimum wage is too high. By freezing it in dollar terms, inflation overtime reduces its real value.
Government subsidy to employers
The minimum wage for adults remains frozen at $543.78 per week, $14.31 per hour. This is not a living wage. A family paying rent or servicing a mortgage, with all the other costs they face, can only survive by government subsidies.
Employers have been let off the hook, not forced to pay a living wage. This government assistance takes such forms as rental assistance, low income tax offsets, family benefits and most recently stimulus package handouts. As important as these various benefits are to workers and their families, they would not be necessary if employers paid a living wage.
The Commission’s argument that low wage workers have already received the equivalent of a $20 a week rise through indexing of family benefits and government’s stimulus packages confirms that these payments are a form of indirect corporate welfare, a means of holding down wages to boost profits.
The Commission even included the tax cuts as a reason for freezing wages, except most of the cuts went to those on middle to high incomes. Some low wage workers did not get a tax cut, and did not get the recent $900 stimulus payment either. Their incomes, below the tax threshold, were too low to qualify!
It shows just how out of touch the Harpers and Sloanes are and how little they care about ordinary hard working Australians who are doing it tough. (Harper got paid $124,900 for his part-time position to deliver that decision.)
Reject the decision
The Un-Fair Pay Commission set July 2010 as the expiry date of its wage freeze, at which time the new Fair Work Australia will be in operation. If by then, there is not a miraculous turn-around in the economic situation, another wage freeze or even a reduction in the rate per hour could be on the cards. With the number of jobless predicted to rise and a profit reporting season of gloom and doom on the horizon, there is no guarantee of a wage rise in 12 months time.
A great deal will depend on how the trade union movement responds to this decision. History shows that ultimately, what is won from commissions depends on the struggle on the ground. Low wage workers, the working poor of Australia, should not have to wait until July 2010 to see what crumbs they are thrown.
The recent ACTU Congress made a commitment to raise the federal minimum wage by $56.22 to $600 per week within the next two years through political, community and workplace campaigning. This campaign cannot wait until July 2010.
The campaign must begin now, with pressure mounted on the new Minimum Wage Panel of Fair Work Australia to deliver an increase in the minimum wage by October at the latest, backdated to July.
A “wages-led recovery” will not only improve the living standards of the low paid, but it will speed-up the process of recovery. This is not “a decision we have to accept”.
Anna Pha
On July 9, the Fair Pay Commission imposed a real wage reduction on more than 1.3 million of Australia’s lowest paid workers. The wage decision directly hits those who rely on minimum award rates of pay. The key consideration in its decision was corporate profits. The Commission opted for what it called “a profit-led recovery”, trotting out the usual employer mythology that wage rises cause unemployment. The reality is that by imposing a real wage reduction, the Commission, and the employers whose bidding it does, will drive the economy deeper into recession at the cost of thousands upon thousands more jobs.
“The decision means ordinary working Australians and their families are bearing the brunt of an economic downturn they did not cause,” said ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence said.
“Many workers have already lost their jobs, had their hours cut and now more than a million families are facing a pay freeze despite rising living costs,” Mr Lawrence said. “The costs of rent, food, medicines, education and utilities have all risen in the past year and families need a pay rise to keep up.”
The Commission flatly rejected the ACTU’s claim for a modest $21 a week rise (less than 56 cents per hour), and instituted a wage freeze. Trade unions were taken by surprise, and thousands of workers, desperately struggling to make ends meet had their hopes of a few extra dollars to meet rising prices dashed.
Employers on the other hand are jubilant. They got what the asked for: no wage rise.
The Rudd Labor government asked the Commission to make a “considered” minimum wage increase, without specifying any amount. This made it easy for the Commission to do its considering. When the decision was handed down, Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard said she was “disappointed” but that the real wage reduction was “a decision we have to accept”.
She then went on to defend the Commission’s decision with the comments, “… I understand and the government understands that the Fair Pay Commission confronted the most difficult minimum wages setting environment for many decades that any industrial authority has had to confront.”
The real wage reduction is not surprising considering the membership of the Howard government’s appointees on the Commission. It includes such leading lights of the New Right as Professor Ian Harper and Judith Sloane. They always have an excuse to oppose wage rises, regardless of the state of the economy.
Profits first
The Commission in its decision raised the question of a “wage-led or profit-led recovery”, and chose the profit-led option.
“For many businesses, the decline in aggregate demand has led to significantly lower profitability and changes in business practices,” the Commission said and then in a blind leap of faith embarked on a course that will reduce demand even further. The failure to deliver a $21 a week wage rise to the lowest paid workers will have the effect of reducing demand by more than $1 billion.
Just this month there have been increases in the price of petrol, electricity, water, gas and health services in a number of states. That leaves less money to pay for everything else, and without a wage rise, fewer goods and services will be purchased.
How many jobs will that cost? Thousands more than any jobs that might have been lost because of a small wage rise.
Employers are sacking workers because people cannot afford to buy the goods and services they produce. More workers will be sacked or have their wages and hours cut as a result of this minimum wage decision.
But the narrow-sighted, economic rationalist Commission cynically argues that freezing wages will protect the jobs of low paid workers!
More job losses
The Commission ignores the reason why aggregate demand for goods and services has declined – the gap between what workers are paid and the value of what they produce. The ACTU in its submission pointed out that the profit share of income had increased to record levels in 2008. The Commission itself admits this and makes the point that company gross operating profits increased by 19 percent in the first half of 2008.
This was at the expense of the share of income being paid in wages. It is the build up of this gap between the income from production siphoned off in profits and what is left for workers’ wages that results in economic crisis and recession.
That gap can be narrowed and the economy stimulated by increasing wages. The reduction of real wages undermines the government’s stimulatory measures as well as causing hardship to the workers and their families affected.
All workers affected
The decision is not just a blow for low paid workers. It creates an environment of wage restraint. Unions will find it more difficult arguing for higher wages in enterprise bargaining, unable to seek an increase in line with the minimum rate.
The decision also means that the unemployed are even less likely to get an increase in unemployment benefits. Over the past two to three decades of economic rationalist policies, successive governments have deliberately sought to widen the gap between unemployment benefits and the minimum wage. In line with this trend, the Rudd government refused to raise unemployment benefits when it recently increased aged and other pensions.
The aim is to keep unemployment benefits as far as possible below the poverty line, to force the jobless in sheer desperation to accept any work, regardless of how appalling the working conditions and wages are. Time and again capitalist economists claim the minimum wage is too high. By freezing it in dollar terms, inflation overtime reduces its real value.
Government subsidy to employers
The minimum wage for adults remains frozen at $543.78 per week, $14.31 per hour. This is not a living wage. A family paying rent or servicing a mortgage, with all the other costs they face, can only survive by government subsidies.
Employers have been let off the hook, not forced to pay a living wage. This government assistance takes such forms as rental assistance, low income tax offsets, family benefits and most recently stimulus package handouts. As important as these various benefits are to workers and their families, they would not be necessary if employers paid a living wage.
The Commission’s argument that low wage workers have already received the equivalent of a $20 a week rise through indexing of family benefits and government’s stimulus packages confirms that these payments are a form of indirect corporate welfare, a means of holding down wages to boost profits.
The Commission even included the tax cuts as a reason for freezing wages, except most of the cuts went to those on middle to high incomes. Some low wage workers did not get a tax cut, and did not get the recent $900 stimulus payment either. Their incomes, below the tax threshold, were too low to qualify!
It shows just how out of touch the Harpers and Sloanes are and how little they care about ordinary hard working Australians who are doing it tough. (Harper got paid $124,900 for his part-time position to deliver that decision.)
Reject the decision
The Un-Fair Pay Commission set July 2010 as the expiry date of its wage freeze, at which time the new Fair Work Australia will be in operation. If by then, there is not a miraculous turn-around in the economic situation, another wage freeze or even a reduction in the rate per hour could be on the cards. With the number of jobless predicted to rise and a profit reporting season of gloom and doom on the horizon, there is no guarantee of a wage rise in 12 months time.
A great deal will depend on how the trade union movement responds to this decision. History shows that ultimately, what is won from commissions depends on the struggle on the ground. Low wage workers, the working poor of Australia, should not have to wait until July 2010 to see what crumbs they are thrown.
The recent ACTU Congress made a commitment to raise the federal minimum wage by $56.22 to $600 per week within the next two years through political, community and workplace campaigning. This campaign cannot wait until July 2010.
The campaign must begin now, with pressure mounted on the new Minimum Wage Panel of Fair Work Australia to deliver an increase in the minimum wage by October at the latest, backdated to July.
A “wages-led recovery” will not only improve the living standards of the low paid, but it will speed-up the process of recovery. This is not “a decision we have to accept”.
Saturday, 4 July 2009
Rig workers say no to second rate agreement
An employer has failed to bypass the union and introduce a substandard non- union agreement to cover rig workers. Rig workers on the DP Drilling Rig Ensco 7500 off Barrow Island in Western Australia rejected a non-union agreement after meeting with Maritime Union of Australia and Australian Workers’ Union (MUA/AWU) alliance organiser Glen Williams on June 22.
During a rig inspection Glen got to meet with rig workers to discuss Ensco’s proposed Non Union Employee Collective Agreement. The company had put the agreement out to a vote without any prior discussion or negotiations with the workers.
One group of workers reported that at the end of their last hitch on the rig they arrived at Perth Airport to be met by a company representative. They were then whisked off in a bus to a nearby hotel where a lawyer was waiting with a copy of the agreement for them to sign.
The contract locked workers into very poor terms and conditions of employment for five years. It gave Ensco the right to review salaries annually and without negotiation decide to forgo any pay rise. The agreement also included four weeks hitches and a clause that allowed Ensco to stand down workers on no pay whenever they felt it necessary.
“But the workers all stood together, united and refused to sign this second rate agreement,” said Glen Williams. “They all joined the AWU/MUA Alliance along with most of their workmates.”
Another worker reported that on the tow over from South Africa they went 14 days over their hitch. They were all given $100 per day on top of their wages in compensation for not being home with their families.
“This is totally unacceptable and well below what overcycle payments are across the industry,” said Glen Williams.
The workforce voted NO and rejected the agreement.
The MUA-AWU Alliance will be taking these matters up with Ensco, seeking fair payment for ALL workers on Ensco 7500. The Alliance has contacted Ensco seeking a meeting to talk through many of the issues on the rig and to engage in negotiations towards getting a collective agreement that reflects the standards enjoyed by every other sector of the offshore oil and gas industry.
The Ensco 7500 workers have united together to fight for a fairer go and improved terms and conditions of employment on their rig.
During a rig inspection Glen got to meet with rig workers to discuss Ensco’s proposed Non Union Employee Collective Agreement. The company had put the agreement out to a vote without any prior discussion or negotiations with the workers.
One group of workers reported that at the end of their last hitch on the rig they arrived at Perth Airport to be met by a company representative. They were then whisked off in a bus to a nearby hotel where a lawyer was waiting with a copy of the agreement for them to sign.
The contract locked workers into very poor terms and conditions of employment for five years. It gave Ensco the right to review salaries annually and without negotiation decide to forgo any pay rise. The agreement also included four weeks hitches and a clause that allowed Ensco to stand down workers on no pay whenever they felt it necessary.
“But the workers all stood together, united and refused to sign this second rate agreement,” said Glen Williams. “They all joined the AWU/MUA Alliance along with most of their workmates.”
Another worker reported that on the tow over from South Africa they went 14 days over their hitch. They were all given $100 per day on top of their wages in compensation for not being home with their families.
“This is totally unacceptable and well below what overcycle payments are across the industry,” said Glen Williams.
The workforce voted NO and rejected the agreement.
The MUA-AWU Alliance will be taking these matters up with Ensco, seeking fair payment for ALL workers on Ensco 7500. The Alliance has contacted Ensco seeking a meeting to talk through many of the issues on the rig and to engage in negotiations towards getting a collective agreement that reflects the standards enjoyed by every other sector of the offshore oil and gas industry.
The Ensco 7500 workers have united together to fight for a fairer go and improved terms and conditions of employment on their rig.
Resolution of ACTU Congress 2009
Australian Building and Construction Commission
1. Congress calls on the Rudd Labor government to immediately repeal the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act (the BCII Act) and to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission (the ABCC).
2. Congress condemns the Rudd Labor government for maintaining the BCII Act and the ABCC. Congress notes that the continued existence of the BCII Act contravenes Labor Party policy, which affirms that Labor does not support laws that discriminate against workers employed in a particular industry.
3. Congress notes that:
• The ABCC has had a serious negative effect on Occupational Health and Safety in a high-risk industry;
• The ABCC persistently breaches the standards of propriety, honesty, fairness and professionalism expected of government agencies and fails to observe the standards required of a government model litigant. The ABCC has pursued politically motivated investigations and prosecutions against unions and workers and has failed to prosecute one employer for underpayment or non-payment of workers entitlements, despite having the power to do so; and
• On five occasions committees of the International Labor Organisation have stated that the law is inconsistent with Australia’s obligations under ILO conventions concerning Collective Bargaining and Freedom of Association.
4. Congress rejects proposals to create a separate inspectorate within Fair Work Australia, and to retain coercive interview powers as inconsistent with fairness, Labor policy and ILO conventions.
5. Congress maintains that:
• No group of workers should be subject to discriminatory laws;
• Coercive interrogation powers have no role in industrial relations and must not be inserted into the Fair Work Act;
• Workers should have a right to confidential communications with their union and colleagues regarding industrial matters and to representation by the lawyer of their choice; and
• Any regulator dealing with industrial matters should be even-handed, transparent and professional in its conduct and ensure procedural and substantive fairness to all parties.
6. Congress calls for the immediate removal of those provisions of the Building Industry Code and Guidelines that are aimed at weakening workers’ rights and union organisation.
7. Congress calls on unions affiliated to the ALP to support the principles of this resolution in all forums of the party, including the 2009 ALP National Conference.
8. Congress condemns the prosecution of workers for alleged refusal to participate in compulsory ABCC interrogations, particularly the current prosecution of Ark Tribe. Congress affirms its support for any worker who is prosecuted for non-compliance with coercive interviews. Congress authorises the ACTU Executive to co-ordinate a campaign of protest and industrial action against this prosecution and, if necessary, support for any worker who is prosecuted or jailed for non-compliance.
The above resolution was unanimously adopted by the ACTU at its triennial Congress in Brisbane in June 2009. The ACTU and the building industry trade unions in particular, have the full support of the Communist Party of Australia in seeing this resolution implemented.
1. Congress calls on the Rudd Labor government to immediately repeal the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act (the BCII Act) and to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission (the ABCC).
2. Congress condemns the Rudd Labor government for maintaining the BCII Act and the ABCC. Congress notes that the continued existence of the BCII Act contravenes Labor Party policy, which affirms that Labor does not support laws that discriminate against workers employed in a particular industry.
3. Congress notes that:
• The ABCC has had a serious negative effect on Occupational Health and Safety in a high-risk industry;
• The ABCC persistently breaches the standards of propriety, honesty, fairness and professionalism expected of government agencies and fails to observe the standards required of a government model litigant. The ABCC has pursued politically motivated investigations and prosecutions against unions and workers and has failed to prosecute one employer for underpayment or non-payment of workers entitlements, despite having the power to do so; and
• On five occasions committees of the International Labor Organisation have stated that the law is inconsistent with Australia’s obligations under ILO conventions concerning Collective Bargaining and Freedom of Association.
4. Congress rejects proposals to create a separate inspectorate within Fair Work Australia, and to retain coercive interview powers as inconsistent with fairness, Labor policy and ILO conventions.
5. Congress maintains that:
• No group of workers should be subject to discriminatory laws;
• Coercive interrogation powers have no role in industrial relations and must not be inserted into the Fair Work Act;
• Workers should have a right to confidential communications with their union and colleagues regarding industrial matters and to representation by the lawyer of their choice; and
• Any regulator dealing with industrial matters should be even-handed, transparent and professional in its conduct and ensure procedural and substantive fairness to all parties.
6. Congress calls for the immediate removal of those provisions of the Building Industry Code and Guidelines that are aimed at weakening workers’ rights and union organisation.
7. Congress calls on unions affiliated to the ALP to support the principles of this resolution in all forums of the party, including the 2009 ALP National Conference.
8. Congress condemns the prosecution of workers for alleged refusal to participate in compulsory ABCC interrogations, particularly the current prosecution of Ark Tribe. Congress affirms its support for any worker who is prosecuted for non-compliance with coercive interviews. Congress authorises the ACTU Executive to co-ordinate a campaign of protest and industrial action against this prosecution and, if necessary, support for any worker who is prosecuted or jailed for non-compliance.
The above resolution was unanimously adopted by the ACTU at its triennial Congress in Brisbane in June 2009. The ACTU and the building industry trade unions in particular, have the full support of the Communist Party of Australia in seeing this resolution implemented.
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