BY
VANNESSA HEARMAN
Martin Kingham is the Victorian secretary of the construction and general division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). On April 29, he will face charges in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, relating to his refusal to provide the building industry royal commission with the names of unionists who had attended training courses.
The royal commissionÂ’s report was made public in March. It contained a series of recommendations designed to “improve” the workings of the industry. Kingham spoke to Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly about the unionÂ’s response to the commissionÂ’s report and the implications for workersÂ’ rights.
“The commission’s findings were predictable. Ostensibly it was designed to uncover corruption and violence in the building industry, that was how they sold it to the Australian public — by painting our industry as full of thugs and standover men”, Kingham said. “In actual fact, it was designed to attack union militancy and to outlaw pattern bargaining.”
Pattern bargaining, in which a union negotiates workplace agreements with a common finish date across an industry allowing industry-wide campaigns to set wages and conditions, has infuriated the Coalition government.
“So we are not surprised by the recommendations”, Kingham continued, “they are designed to criminalise industrial activities, to ensure that the union’s gains in terms of wages and conditions for our members are stopped”.
The commission recommended that criminal charges be laid against some union officials. Kingham said that these relate only to technical breaches of the workplace relations act, such as failing to notify employers prior to a workplace visit. “Other unions need to see these attacks against the construction unions as an attack on all workers’ right to organise”, he pointed out.
The commission also recommended the establishment of a building and construction industry improvement act and the establishment of a commission to oversee it. Kingham explained that even before the royal commissionÂ’s report was released, employment minister Tony Abbott had established an interim taskforce to carry out secret investigations into unionists.
CFMEU members have been advised not to cooperate with the taskforce. Charges have been brought against some union officials as a result of the taskforce’s activities. “Its activities are designed to open the way up for this new commission”, Kingham said.
Kingham argued that both workers and employers saw the commission as “interference in the industry”. “Employers will have to comply with the provisions of the act and notify the building industry commission within 14 days of a union visit to the workplace and reveal the names of union members who called the union official in the first place.”
He said that pattern bargaining has so far been accepted by employers, as it acted to regulate wages and conditions in the industry, but “employers are going to play it both ways, on one hand continue to sign pattern agreements with the union, whilst supporting the government’s changes, simply to do what’s best for themselves”.
“Just like we were active in supporting the Maritime Union of Australia’s struggle on the wharves in 1998 and opposing the war in Iraq this year, we hope that we can make links with the community out there to make sure that we stop these attacks on workers”, Kingham said. The union will also lobby parliamentary parties not to pass the commission’s recommended legislation.
He said the rank and file of the union is prepared to fight. “Bring it on, they say, but our members also need to know that they are supported by other unions and the community”. He said CFMEU members were keen to challenge the royal commission’s implication that the union used “standover tactics”.
“We see this as a long-term struggle and broad support will be needed, to maintain our morale and fighting spirit.”
He said the union had already begun to raise funds among members to cope with legal costs and fines. “This government wants to attack us front on, but they also want to bleed us dry financially to stop us operating.”
Kingham is not new to political controversy. He was arrested as a 15-year-old high school student protesting in Brisbane against the Vietnam War. “It made me wonder about a system that arrested people for protesting against a war.”
He left Australia for Britain, where at 20 years’ old, he took up a mature-aged carpentry apprenticeship. In London, he was active in the Union of Construction and Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT) until his sacking from Camden Council in the early 1980s. “I was made redundant with 3000 other council workers. Under the Tories, all council services had to be tendered out and councils were not allowed to employ their own maintenance workers. We used to maintain all the council-owned housing before that.” With his redundancy payment in hand and a young family, he returned to Australia. He then became involved in building unions here.
The CFMEU has been increasingly called upon by the community to act on issues as diverse as solidarity with East Timor and refugees, anti-war, and green bans to protect parkland and heritage buildings — yet the union has managed at the same time to win significant gains for its members, including a 36-hour work week.
Asked how difficult it was to manage the tension between fighting for “bread and butter” issues and taking up broader social and community issues, Kingham conceded that war and refugees were controversial inside the union.
“We have a diverse membership and industry, and we also believe in democracy — so we have to discuss and argue in our meetings, taking up each issue and explaining the politics of each one, looking at the links between them all. In the fight for the 36-hour work week, we had to explain why there needed to be restrictions on overtime. There was no point having a cap on the work week in general and sharing the work around, if we didn’t cap the overtime too.”
He pointed out that the industry contained many migrants and “battlers”. “They have had experience doing the dirty jobs, being discriminated against and so on. So once we get past the Herald Sun tabloid line [on refugees], we start to tap into a deep well of sympathy, borne out of their own experiences. We also think our members have a strong sense of justice. They hate being seen as standover men, but something they hate most of all is being stood over, being trampled upon.”
Kingham cited the example of the government raid to capture “illegal” workers at a Port Melbourne site on February 20. The raid specifically targeted all those of Asian appearance in the workplace. “The workers got so angry about the police racism that the next day they marched back into the workplace chanting, ‘Asian plasterers, here to stay’. I think that’s a small step forward in fostering solidarity between all workers.”
Similarly, he said that in an industry in which a considerable proportion of workers have served with the Australian Defence Force, arguing a case against war in Iraq was not easy. “Trying to convince them that war wasn’t in workers’ interests was still a positive process for our union, where at least we put the issue on the agenda and weren’t afraid to debate it out.”
Workers and the community will rally to support Kingham outside the court on April 29. The court hearings, set to last for four days, will coincide with the M1 rally to commemorate May Day. “Aside from the rallies and meetings to inform other unions and the community about what’s going on with the campaign, we also hope to establish a committee which will support unions and fight attacks against union rights to formalise the support base out there, to have other voices to add to our own”, Kingham said.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, April 23, 2003.
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