Labor has collapsed the CFMEU (and perhaps they didn’t think it through)
The Albanese Government decision to put the largest trade union in the country into administration is unprecedented and consequential.
On Tuesday, the biggest union crowd in 30 years hit the streets of Australian major cities in response to the government’s forced takeover of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU). In a rapid response to uncovered explosive allegations of criminal infiltration, kickback offers and corruption in a media report for Nine media, the Albanese Labor government acted quickly and passed unique and unprecedented laws that would effectively hollow out the union as we knew it.
Buoyed by the cacophony of noise generated by the coiled springs of anti-union commentary in industry and media, the government passed legislation to dismiss over 200 CFMEU officials in June, pushing the country’s biggest union into administration, including three branches (WA, ACT, QLD) who had no record of corrupt or criminal activity. The legislation would prevent all of the applicants from reapplying for their positions, including a ban on any union activity in different sectors, all but completely purging the union, sending it into three-year period of administration and its organisational muscle memory into atrophy.
The Albanese government owes much of its 2022 electoral success to the organising of the union movement, and perhaps more importantly, the large political donations it received. The relationship between unions and the party for the worker has changed somewhat in the last couple of decades. John Howard’s WorkChoices, combined with a smattering of Blairite neoliberal Rudd/Gillard government, a fat decade of Coalition government, and a swathe of funding diversity from the big end of town, saw a returning Labor government demonstrate a different consideration of the Unions, and adopted a new measure to gauge their importance to the party.
On the streets, among the swelling membership ranks, where the sprawling lakes of hi-vis spills out into the nations capitals, it can be expressed a bit more clearly: “Albo screwed us”. Before the election in 2022 as Jim Chalmers and Katie Gallager courted the titans of industry and rubbed shoulders at the industry lobby group black tie dinners, the CFMEU donated $1.974 million to the Albanese campaign, and the Albanese campaign asked their members for their vote. And they got it. When it comes down to it, Labor has done more to protect its Coalition comrades from Robodebt involvement, more to cover for the titanic industrial class, than it has to protect the structural integrity of a vital workers union.
Legislated in its newly decreed anti-union era, Labor could only stand helpless and watch as Greens MP Max Chandler Mather addressed a big and fully attentive crowd of angry construction workers in Brisbane. Reports came in mentioning the Queensland branch has instructed its members not to vote Labor, and there must be quite a stir in the party administration over a reality that may have dawned, as the CFMEU, the biggest union in the nation, conjoined to the modern story of Labor, and the fortunes of this particular Labor government, was cheering resoundingly for a minor party MP.
It was an uncanny sight to see Chandler-Mather address the crowd of workers, amongst a display of union realignment on a scale that can’t yet be comprehended, with a flow on that will have real and lasting outcomes for the ALP. He made a clear observation that the Albanese government decision has “handed every future Labor or Liberal government a blueprint on how to seize control of any trade union or civil society association they don't like and crush it”, that this changeling of a Labor government has delivered the most “draconian anti-worker” laws in Australian history. A sentiment shared in the hardening masses: how could a Labor government do something like this?
Now when Albanese talks about fancy nation building projects every now and then in between the constanting talk of “keeping Australians safe” and “productivity commission”, he now does so without the support of the biggest builder’s union in the country. For the first time in history under a Labor PM, union members are being told not to vote for Labor, and for the first time in history for the union movement, the CFMEU has been put into administration by a Labor government. This monumental change may not have sunk in yet, as nationwide strikes start to define themselves in the wake of the rushed legislation, and the fallout is currently unmeasurable.
The PM has had his approval rating sink to similar numbers to Scott Morrison in 2022, and the carbon-copy delivery of the sovereign-consequential AUKUS, the augmented Tax Cuts and the bipartisan support for the genocide in Israel means it does little to delineate itself from its predecessor. Legacy items like the Voice fell flat, along with lost potential legacy items like mustering the courage to follow through with a television gambling ban, standing up to the rapacious aged care providers instead of caving behind closed doors, or even ensuring that the devastating Robodebt findings were to be met with a fair dinkum response all fell flat.
The party of the worker, often mythologised by the current neoliberal ALP, conjures reluctant spirits of former party greats rolling in their graves at the circus currently on display. Over 115,000 CFMEU members and their families stand isolated from the Labor party for the first time in the history between the two entities. After all the thermal currents generated by the Fordham Effect and the bipartisan back slapping that has become so common, after the low-grade union bashing from people in different economic hemispheres, there is a dangerous vacuum awaiting the party of Peter Lalor, who once marched the first trade unions on earth into the history books, and now frog-march the movement into a hastily dug pit.
The biggest union in Australia was forced into administration under customised zero-tolerance bipartisan legislation, its members votes deemed invalid, and the organisation thrust into the hands of a government/industry facing administrator for three long years. Union critics alike say that swift justice must be served when all the while, among the piles of unanswered recommendations sitting on brand new tables behind closed door ICACs, the big four banks stand unmolested and reoffending in the wake of lip service banking royal commissions, comical fines are issued for environmental breaches by foreign owned fossil fuel giants, and unmitigated price gouging is best practice year on year for the powerful duopolies, revealing a broken system has been functioning to protect the elite for all of us to see. Some might still question why a Labor government has chosen to take the sword to a union rather than a tax-avoiding, regulation-cutting, profit obsessed corporate leviathan. But most know the answer these days.
Coles posted $1 billion dollar profits on the day one of the largest union protests in recent years hit the major capitals of every city on the mainland. For all the hyperactive lunging and bipartisan heavy-handedness, and the resonation of powerful individual anti-union fantasies from the press pundits, it is the decision of Anthony Albanese alone, the punk rock union DJ PM from Marrickville, that made the call to legislate this anti-worker act, setting a precedent that threatens the future of the union movement in this country, providing a blueprint from any government in the future to target any union. Labor has revealed its hand, divorcing from the sacred working essence of the party on what seems like a whim, breaking with the worker in such a consequentially symbolic act, and its future doesn’t look good for its relationship with the Australian union movement, nor its viability as a party of workers.
Good article. It should be apparent that neither labor, nor the l-np govern this country, in the sense of determining policy. . Nor will they ever. We are beginning the death spiral of a nation that signs its destiny over to the imperium at a point in history where the imperium itself is on the edge of a precipice but will not change course. Aukus may as well be called our Anschluss, though the takeover is not recent. It was a symbolic act. The 360billion (let’s face it, >1trillion in reality) is just a periodic tribute payment.
Labor was told it could continue to be the state administrative arm if it didn’t make a fuss, ignored the holocaust in Palestine and hunted down whistleblowers or critics of the US military occupation of northern Australia.
All domestic opposition should be directed at the US military/financial cabal that owns all our resources and dictates economic and foreign policy. Railing against the govt of the day is a waste of time. The alp and l-np is a coalition. If/when a third party challenges the duopoly, they will formally merge.
Resistance should concentrate on clarifying that the enemy (not just of Australia, but the entire working class of the world) is the US financial elite. Our local ‘leaders’ are just goofy looking puppets. Traitors for sure, but very stupid, easily bought ones.
The ALP in its decision making is determined to shun its base and the vulnerable. Anti-Union crackdowns, leaving LGBTQIA+ out of the census, cutting money out of the NDIS, locking Australia into the dangerous AUKUS agreement, uncritical support of Israel at the expense of any sympathy with Palestine.
The LNP lost the last election but won the argument because the ALP capitulates to their framing of the issues every time. What was the point of giving them a majority when they routinely allow the LNP to set the agenda?
At this stage the best we can hope for is a minority government because the ALP is only effective in protecting the powerful.