The Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2017 (bill) is a politically motivated bill, aimed at preventing the merger of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and the Textiles, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia (TCFUA) and reflective of the Coalition’s continued efforts to reduce workers’ rights and undermine unions.
In its determination to attack unions, the Coalition has put forward a bill which noticeably lacks supporting evidence and policy and did not adequately engage with stakeholders. And as noted in a joint submission by a number of key not-for-profit organisations including GetUp!, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Greenpeace, serves to ‘erode the capacity of civil society organisations to stand up to large corporations, and to advocate for measures to better defend social justice and the environment’.
The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (PJCHR) and several submissions raised serious concerns about the bill’s incompatibility with International Labour Organisation (ILO) treaties. In particular, the PJCHR commented that a number of measures in the bill may be incompatible with the right to freedom of association, the right to just and favourable conditions at work, the right of unions to elect their own leadership freely and the right to strike. At the time of this report, a Ministerial response has not yet been published, however the Australian Greens support the ACTU submission which states that the measures in the bill ‘allow excessive political, corporate and regulatory interference in the democratic functioning and control of industrial organisations, with no true objective other than political gain.’ It is difficult to see why employers should have more of a say over which unions their employees can join or who the employees choose to run those unions, yet that seems to be the bill’s effect.
A number of submissions rightly point out that the measures contained in the bill would result in significantly more onerous and stringent laws applying to unions when compared to corporations. For example, the requirement for union amalgamations to be in the public interest is considerably more restrictive than the requirements for corporate mergers which are not required to take into account the interest of workers nor a broader public interest test.
The government’s determination to stamp out what they believe to be a ‘culture of lawlessness’ within unions can only be viewed as insincere whilst they turn a blind eye to wrongdoing in Australia’s banks and boardrooms. This nakedly political attack should be rejected.
The bill should not be passed.