Every three years the Australian Council of Trade Unions meets for its congress, a big decision-making gathering to set policies and strategies for the movement.
That is not what is happening in Canberra on Monday. Instead, a group of 80 union leaders from eight or nine unions extremely cheesed off about the construction union being placed into administration will plot their own way forward.
Everything is on the table, including directing support away from the Labor party towards independents and minor parties and the establishment of a political action committee with more ambitious demands for workplace reforms than the ACTU advocates for.
The immediate catalyst was the Albanese government passing a law with the Coalition and ACTU support to put the construction union into administration over allegations of criminal bikie links. That has already had enormous consequences, such as the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union disaffiliating from the ACTU.
But that’s not their only cause. The maritime union will raise the practice of foreign-crewed ships operating in Australian waters with workers paid below minimum wage and undercutting Australian seafarers’ conditions.
Troy Gray, the Electrical Trade Union Victorian secretary, tells Guardian Australia that “time and time again” after Labor is elected into government the union movement is given “crumbs”.
In the ETU’s industry, it was “big promises” about the opportunities created by the electrification of Australia which Gray says are under threat from visa arrangements that allow cheaper labour from countries like the Philippines.
The plan for next week includes the meeting on Monday and a rally at parliament to coincide with the former construction union officials’ challenge in the high court to be heard on Tuesday and Wednesday. Another conference is being planned for March – just before the election.
Even if this alternative grouping doesn’t result in more disaffiliations from the ACTU, we could easily see a more ambitious set of demands for greater union right of entry and reforming the structural hurdles to taking protected action, including secret ballots.
Gray rejects the view of some detractors that the event would amount to little more than 15 to 20 disaffected officials venting their grievances and then heading off to the pub.
“It’s some of the most respected union leaders with some of the biggest resources who know how to mobilise and campaign – I’d be taking it seriously.”
The ETU has decided to withhold more than $1m from the ALP. Ahead of the bill passing, the prospective CFMEU administrator promised that the union would not be making any political donations during the administration.
In fact, that statement, which was made to the shadow workplace relations minister, Michaelia Cash, and discussed in parliamentary debates by the employment minister, Murray Watt, forms a key part of the plaintiffs’ high court case.
“We’ve already agreed to Senator Cash that the scheme of administration that would be applied under this legislation would ban donations to any political party for the period of the administration,” Watt said.
This may indicate that the law, which was key to winning Coalition support, partly had the purpose of stifling political communication. There’s also evidence of the CFMEU having to sit out the recent ACT election.
CFMEU and ETU donations are big bickies – and would leave a hole of a few million in the coffers for Labor to fill. The prospect that support could go elsewhere only magnifies the risk to Anthony Albanese of a hung parliament or bolshie Senate. There are many potential beneficiaries of the fragmentation.
On some social issues the Greens are a poor fit with blue collar unions, but industrially it is a good match. Adam Bandt is a former industrial lawyer. The party drags Labor to the left on IR. The ETU has donated to the Greens before. And housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather was happy to speak at a CFMEU rally about the evils of the administration.
Former Labor senator Fatima Payman’s chief of staff, Glenn Druery, is keeping abreast of developments in union land, including whether the blue collar unions could run their own candidates.
Druery says what the breakaway unions are doing is “potentially historic”, comparing a potential wider split from the ACTU to the Democratic Labour party’s split from the ALP in the 1950s.
“Large sections of the union movement, particularly blue collar unions but not limited to them, think the ALP isn’t there for them any more,” he says.
Payman, a former United Workers Union organiser, is already positioning herself as a critic of the administration. Her Australia’s Voice party could provide a vehicle for the disaffected.
The exact shape and direction of this alternative union grouping is yet to be determined.
But when the grievance jamboree rolls into Canberra on Monday it should be abundantly clear: the fallout is unlikely to be limited to just the construction union.
