Nicholas Way
Labor sticks to its guns
Employers in the construction industry who met with the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, last Friday would have come away sorely disappointed.
It’s believed that Gillard reiterated the government’s intention to scrap the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) on February 1, 2010 – honouring Labor’s election promise to retain the highly controversial body for most of its first term.
Industry sources say that while Gillard listened carefully to what employers had to say about how the ABCC had brought a sustained period of industrial peace to building sites – especially on highly unionised CBD sites in Melbourne and Perth – that the government would not renege on its promise to unions to scrap the ABCC in its third year in office.
Unions, particularly the key building industry union, the CFMEU, have been agitating since the Rudd government came to power in late 2007 to abolish the ABCC, but Gillard has resolutely stuck to the original timeframe.
Adding to the employers’ grief is the likelihood that the industry guidelines for securing government work are likely to be altered after July 1 to reflect a more union friendly Fair Work Act. As one source put it, "the guidelines will be significantly watered down”.
There was never any real question about whether the ABCC would survive the first term of the Rudd government. Indeed, many industry observers are surprised that it will last to early 2010 given the trenchant union opposition to the organisation and the debt that the political wing owes its industrial brethren for making Work Choices electoral death for the Howard government.
But the pragmatic Gillard would privately know that the ABCC has brought industrial peace to the industry, as the updated 2009 Report on Productivity in the Building and Construction Industry released by the Master Builders Association last week makes abundantly evident.
It says in the executive summary: “All of this evidence supports the conclusion that there has been a significant gain in construction industry productivity. What remains is to identify whether or not the contribution from each source to the productivity gain can be separately isolated.
“The data sources … indicate that the significant productivity gains in construction industry productivity started to appear around 2002-03. This supports the interpretation that it was the activities of the Taskforce, established in October 2002 and, more importantly, the ABCC (given its enforcement powers) when it was established in October 2005 that made a major difference.”
Despite the unions’ claims to the contrary, the industrial peace has come without any undue impact of the industry’s safety record. From 2000-01 to 2005-06, workplace claims per 1000 employees fell from 31 to 25 and preliminary figures for 2006-07 put the figure at 22.
The tragic numbers for workplace deaths don’t reveal a consistent pattern; on average the industry experiences about 30 deaths a year, with the number fluctuating above and below this number. In the first six months of this financial year to June 30 2009, the industry has witnessed 17 deaths, slightly above the norm.
Every death is a personal tragedy; but the CFMEU is drawing a long bow to argue that the ABCC is directly responsible for a more lax approach by employers to workplace safety. Instead, the evidence suggests health and safety has become the unions’ favourite ploy in its campaign to have the ABCC abolished.
That campaign will draw to a favourable conclusion in February next year. What the industry wants to know – as well as the electorate – is whether the body that replaces the ABCC proves as effective in keeping the industrial peace.
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