Labor

BRIDGE TO OBLIVION: Suicide tragedy reminds us what’s at stake at West Gate

The appalling situation caused by the CFMEU picket at the West Gate Bridge continues to shock the city it serves.

Yesterday’s disgrace where convicted rioter and rough-knuckle thug Craig Johnston emerged as a public spokesman for the violent protesters was bad enough.

A SAD END IS A POWERFUL REMINDER
But the sad news that yet another person drove to the top of the bridge yesterday and jumped off the favoured suicide location was a reminder that the upgrade, repairs and improvements to the bridge that are being put into jeopardy by the CFMEU Construction division goons have a real effect on people’s lives.

That’s not to say the union is responsible for someone’s suicide. As it happens, their antics haven’t yet impacted on the timetable for the installation of safety barriers. And at this stage they won’t, according to the company. Even if they had, there’s only one person ever to blame for a suicide.

But they can be blamed for trying to muscle in a workplace where the CFMEU are not needed and not wanted. They can be blamed for illegally paying people money to stay on the so-called “community picket” populated by convicted criminals like Craig Johnston, bikies and other blokes you’d probably not want to have an argument with. They can also be blamed for promoting a culture of corruption within the building and construction industry where legitimate bargaining has been perverted into shakedowns, extortion and intimidation.

This is a dispute partly about power and mostly about money.

While the blokes of biffo at the bridge look knock-about, they roll rich. They are high income earners, by any measure. As long as they’re working, the money is great, largely due to the efficacy of the CFMEU’s tactics over the years.

Whatever you might say about gangsters, they know how to turn a quid.

HIGH INCOME EARNERS
John Holland – the company contracted by the Victorian Government to do the works on the bridge – has explained that their current offer would have the average employee working on the site paid $135,000 per annum.

Not too shabby. Nearly three grand a week. Naturally they’d rather get four grand a week.

The company is offering $28.83 per hour. The union wants more, a lot more, $36.97 if you don’t mind.

Enough to cost taxpayers many millions of dollars if it was agreed. That’s why it won’t be.

Hopefully VEXNEWS slave contributors and helpers will avert their eyes at these numbers and continue to appreciate their round figures and Gloria Jeans vouchers. (Rumours that KFC vouchers are to be reinstated are firmly denied by management)

Many in the labour movement have been instinctively opposed to the Howard Government’s Australian Building and Construction Commission because it gives bureaucrats coercive questioning powers and costs so much to run. It’s the sort of law enforcement agency that clearly would not exist in the ideal world.

But the reality of the construction industry couldn’t be further from the ideal.

It is scandalous.

So scandalous that many in the ALP are questioning the live and let live attitude extended to the industrial outlaws who routinely use tactics of intimidation and violence to get their way.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Premier Brumby has made it clear he’s not going to tolerate the situation at the West Gate much longer. Nor should he. The government has extensive powers to crack-down on industrial chicanery, they are rightly normally reluctant to go in very hard, most unions bargain decently and in good faith. But this latest example of CFMEU expansionism and thuggery has clearly passed those limits. If mediation fails, as we suspect it will, the picket situation will require immediate and decisive action from the state government.

Kudos to the Liberal Industrial Relations spokesman Robert Clark for demanding they do so.

The Brumby government needs to stop tolerating the intolerable outrages coming from a union without a conscience. Some would say it’s interesting to compare the tough treatment meted out by Daniel Andrews to the Health Services Union with the softly-softly treatment the CFMEU get.

It’s reminiscent of the Simpson’s Halloween episode where Bart has the power to transform people into goats and such by the merest glance. He is treated with grovelling obsequiousness, out of fear for what he’ll do next.

AN ABUSE OF POWER
They are the standover men of Victorian workplace relations. They keep doing it because it works. It’s a great little earner. Using Maoist rhetoric, they say it’s about the workers’ struggle but it’s really about a high-paying racket run by a union without a conscience.

A union that happily delays hospitals being built to heal sick kids. A union that sees the Federal Government’s stimulus package as an excuse for a site allowance shakedown that comes directly from the pockets of taxpayers and would cause cost blowouts for schools and other public infrastructure.

The CFMEU look at announcements of large new taxpayer funded projects like a cat looks at a bowl of cream. There is concern in government circles about the CFMEU’s role in the desalination plant and other politically sensitive projects.

That union continues to enjoy a formal affiliation with the Australian Labor Party, it is allocated votes within the decision-making structures of the ALP, it has a formal and entrenched say in determining which candidates represent Labor at elections.

It’s an important role of public trust in society. Increasingly the leadership of the ALP, including from its Left aligned factions, are questioning whether the CFMEU should continue to play that role.

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