Bill Shorten has suddenly decided to do something about the Unions stealing money from their members and exhorting bribes and blackmailing businesses.
He is about to announce a proposal for significant new powers to crack down on corrupt unions in a bid to reposition Labor in the wake of the trade unions royal commission.
After a year in which the Opposition Leader has been dogged by the royal commission and his performance in the witness stand, Labor will attempt to demonstrate to voters it too is prepared to crack down on corruption.
Their first plan of attack was to ignore all the revelations coming out of the Trade Union Royal Commission but when the press kept on reporting the shady deals as facts, which they obviously were, they then started labeling it as a witch hunt. The public saw through that as well so now Bill feels obliged to show he has “zero tolerance for criminality or corruption in the union movement”.
“
Zero Tolerance” as different from “
Full Tolerance” that has been the ALP’s attitude to Union rorting up to this point.
I don’t recall the words “Zero Tolerance” ever used during the Craig Johnson trials.
Bill Shorten indicates he is still in denial;
“At the core of the Liberals and their political ideology, is a desire to destroy the ability of unions to effectively represent workers, making it easier to rip away pay and conditions like penalty rates,” he said.
No it isn’t Bill. The core of the Liberals and the thinking public’s ideology is to have unions operate under the same rules as businesses. That is to say, when Union officials steal money from their members, extort money from businesses or blackmail them, they are fined or sent to prison just like Business leaders are.
Don’t steal money from your members….nothing to fear.
Don’t extort money or blackmail businesses….nothing to fear.
Account for your funds through independent audit….nothing to fear.
Easy Bill.
I wonder if today’s news has any impact on Bill’s timing;
Two of Australia’s most powerful construction unionists have been charged with blackmail as a year-long investigation into Victorian CFMEU state secretary John Setka and his deputy, Shaun Reardon, arising from the trade union royal commission, culminated in dramatic arrests.
A bit hard to deny now.
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Kev, a quick read of your union-bashing post suggests that you’ve probably never been member of an industrial organisation, so I’ll take the opportunity of providing a basic primer on the Australian union movement, and outlining some of my personal experience of the union movement.
A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, but none at all is deadly.
Australian stonemasons were the first workers anywhere to achieve an eight hour day. They did this in 1865, after a protest march. During the transportation era, almost all workers were convicts. The stonemasons’ action began a campaign amongst Australia workers, and after the great strikes of the 1890s, and the repression that followed direct action, Australian workers began a political movement which became the Australian Labor movement. It saw its origins in Queensland, at Barcaldine with the shearer’s strike.
This movement achieved reforms that allowed for the creation of a relatively prosperous working class in this country, something that still has not been achieved, for example, across the Pacific, with the perpetual existence there of a class of working poor.
Apart from the above mentioned eight hour day, during the history of the movement, paid sick leave, long service leave, workers’ compensation, safe working conditions, parental leave, unfair dismissal laws, uniform allowances, penalty rates and superannuation are just a few of the benefits hard won by the union movement.
Again, this has elevated the average Australian worker to a situation envied in most other comparable countries.
Despite Hal Colebatch’s rewriting of history, the Australian Union movement contributed to our participation in both world wars. Most Australian diggers, prior to enlistment, had been union members. They carried the culture of solidarity into their military service, which was one of the reasons for the fact that man for man, Australian soldiers sailors and airmen outperformed their British and American counterparts in both these conflicts.
From a personal standpoint, I have been a union member since I started work in 1963. This involved membership of four different unions (I’ve worked on the factory floor, in retail and on farm, as well as teaching), and the only interruption was during my national service, although I did discover that my name had remained on the books of the QTU through that period, even though I hadn’t paid dues.
On RTA, the education department actually lost my records, so I didn’t get a paycheck after my initial return to teaching. I had bought a car, paid a bond on a flat, and shelled out on clothes, as nothing I owned prior to Nasho fitted me any more. I was broke, and too proud to ask my parents for help.
The union didn’t lose my file, and despite their trenchant opposition to conscription, they were still prepared, with the help of my principal, to get up the ribs of the payroll people to get me paid. I discovered later that the delegate who fought for me did it against the best advice of the QTU hierarchy. I was actually presented with a hand delivered cheque which an apparatchik from the relevant section drove out to my school to deliver. Again, the political affiliation of a union is not an issue when it comes to supporting members.
This culture of standing up for members against whatever power is arranged against them has been a hallmark of union membership for me for the fifty plus years of my membership experience.
The fact that a handful of corrupt Unionists have been charged through evidence dug up by the TURC changes none of this. If you do a cost benefit analysis of the price of these convictions, you’re looking at a total budget of $52 million for say 5 convictions (assuming they are convicted). That doesn’t come across to me as value for the taxpayer dollar.
If the Coalition were morally consistent, we’d be seeing a royal commission into the practices of labour hire companies (the backpackers ripoffs) and franchises such as 7/11 who have been stealing their employees wages for years. Of course, people who work for 7/11 aren’t allow to join unions, or if they do so, must keep it quiet.
The TURC is quite simply an expensive smear, presided over by a conservative judge being paid twice the PM’s salary to do his bidding, and to find out if workers have been dudded – the irony – it burns.
Any union organiser who breaks the law should be put through the proverbial row of shithouses, but to tar the whole union movement, and the thousands of union organisers who work daily for their membership with that brush, is the same as saying that all coppers are corrupt because a few get caught.
My nephew, a beat cop in Brisbane, would not take that sort of rubbish on the chin. Neither should any unionist.
Yeah, yeah, and they got kids out of coal mines. We’re not talking about the history or the altruistic thoughts behind the formation of unions.
You did OK up to “Despite Hal Colebatch’s rewriting of history” He recorded history and it well known that during WW2 the Unions, some of whom where then communist inspired and to some extent financed, did their level best to stifle the war effort until Russia joined the Allies – well sort of joined the allies.
During Vietnam, still enamoured of the Communists, they did their level best, once again, to stifle the war effort this time in concert with leading Communist, Jim Cairns.
Today, they still give the country grief and cost us billions in the construction industry.
That doesn’t come across to me as value for the taxpayer dollar. If We are talking about value for the taxpayer then with bribery, extortion and blackmailed removed from the construction industry infrastructure savings would be in the billions, not millions.
Any union organiser who breaks the law should be put through the proverbial row of shithouses.
Yeah right. You all say that but nothing happens.
All you ALP types are still in denial about Craig Johnson who Idiot Gillard supported because her government might fall if she didn’t. Every second ALP politician got up and said what a wonderful chap he was when the nation, at least those that read, were well aware he was a crook and simply stole money from the poor members.
The ALP are duty bound to support their union mates – it’s where they come from. The ALP will deny any criminal activities unless forced to do so by Royal Commissions.
Do you really think Bill Shorten would have done anything without the RC pointing out the criminal activities.
17 etc, the people know that certain unions leaders are thugs and out and out criminals. They also know that the ALP will do nothing about it unless forced to the wall.
They also know that not all union leaders are thieves, but many are and they feel for the poor members getting ripped off by leaders who claim to represent them.
I look forward to the release of the TURC and so should you. It could lead to better outcomes for the members.
Trouble is, Kev, Colebatch’s work is not a “recording of history”.
He completely avoids using primary sources, relying instead on anecdote and myth. Here are a few examples –
1. He writes about an incident when 16 “American” Vultee Vengeance dive bombers got lost and crashed on the way back from a raid on Rabaul Colebatch claimed radar on their Green Island base wasn’t working because wharfies stole the valves.
In the first place, the Yanks never used Vultee Vengeances in New Guinea. Any record of their use will show you this –
“The Vultee A-31 Vengeance was an American dive bomber of World War II, built by Vultee Aircraft. A modified version was designated A-35. The Vengeance was not used operationally by the United States but was operated as a front-line aircraft by the British Royal Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the Indian Air Force in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific. The A-31 remained in service with U.S. units until 1945, primarily in a target-tug role”.
(Citation – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vultee_A-31_Vengeance)
“The Vengeance was used operationally only by the RAF and the Royal Indian Air Force in the India-Burma theatre. The USAAF A-35 were mainly used as high-speed target tugs. Production of the Vengeance ceased in the autumn of 1944 after 1,528 had been built”.
(Citation – http://www.aviastar.org/air/usa/vultee_vengeance.php)
And –
“The Vengeance was used by five RAAF squadrons, four of which took it into combat”.
(Citation http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_vultee_vengeance_RAAF.html)
They were used operationally by the RAAF for a very brief period and were replaced by Liberators, as they were not very effective. I remember my father (who served in the RAAF in New Guinea as a radio fitter) talking about these aircraft. His stories, although anecdotes, match the recorded history. Colebatch’s does not. These aircraft were never used by the Yanks, there is no record of 16 going missing, and the story about the wharfies stealing valves is myth.
You could be charitable and grant that perhaps poor old Hal got a bit confused and the incident involved RAAF Vengeances. A search of the AWM database makes no mention of any such incident. You can check the record of each of the squadrons that used these aircraft, and there is no such occurrence.
(Citation – https://www.awm.gov.au/search/all/?query=Vultee+Vengeance&submit=&op=Search&format=list§ion%5B%5D=events§ion%5B%5D=units§ion%5B%5D=places§ion%5B%5D=articles§ion%5B%5D=books§ion%5B%5D=people§ion%5B%5D=collections)
It’s obvious that Colebatch either made the whole thing up, or recorded an anecdote without checking the record. That is either very poor writing, or a deliberate mistruth.
2. Colebatch writes of an alleged incident in October 1945, when he claims Australian POWS were held penned-up on a British aircraft carrier, HMS Speaker, which had brought them home. He claims the wharfies would not allow them ashore to meet their loved ones for 36 hours.
If this happened, it did so without being recorded anywhere. There is nothing in the newspaper record of the day. The highly detailed ship’s history of HMS Speaker, written by one of the ship’s officers who being a Pom would not have an axe to grind, makes no mention of it.
(Citation – http://www.royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk/ESCORT/SPEAKER_2.htm#.Vm4eGb_wPxM) – Part 2.
What the newspaper reports of the day record is that the men were greeted by cheering crowds the day they arrived. There is no record of a wharfies strike that day.
(Citation – http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/12147470)
Colebatch (by exception) did provide a source – a letter from a W.S. Monks, dated 1995, 50 years after the event and 20 years ago. There was no soldier or POW of that name in WWII. Try the “search for a person” facility on the AWM website and see how you get on….
Again, Colebatch either lacked the historical acumen to check the primary sources, or made the whole thing up.
Probably the best account of incidents on the home front during WW2 was written by Sir Paul Hasluck in Australia in “The War of 1939–1945”, a 22-volume official history of Australia’s involvement in World War II. To quote him –
“Strikes occurred in all parts of Australia and among many groups of workers. Most of them were local disputes over local grievances and were quickly settled. A number of them were by workers in disregard and in some cases in defiance of their union executives”.
Hasluck was hardly an apologist for Unionists, serving as a Liberal MLC for 20 years, and in Menzies’ cabinet as Minister for External Affairs.
It’s also worth recording that between 1939 and 1945, Australian merchant mariners suffered high losses with at least 288 killed by enemy action. Many of these casualties occurred in Australian waters through mines, submarine and air attacks. This would not seem to be the behaviour of treacherous civilians in time of war. Colebatch’s polemic dishonours the memory of these men.
Of course, Colebatch’s perspective is betrayed by his own history. He is a son of the short-term (one-month) twelfth premier of West Australia, Sir Harry Colebatch, who accompanied strikebreakers onto the waterfront during the bitter Fremantle wharf crisis of 1919. This contributed to the death of trade union loyalist Tom Edwards following a police batoning. Colebatch also stood unsuccessfully in the 1977 and 1993 state elections for the seat of Perth as the Liberal candidate. Perhaps some of his bitterness can be put down to his thwarted political aspirations.
There is one aspect of the wartime history of unionism that Colebatch completely fails to grasp. After Hitler’s invasion of Russia, the Communist Party of Australia strove to reduce industrial action and supported a vigorous prosecution of the war.
Individual members of unions were not as ideologically pure as their officials and may well have pilfered, struck and vandalised cargos. If so, they were in defiance of the union. Colebatch’s lack of understanding of this basic fact of history and his invention of an organised conspiracy makes him look pretty silly
Good tactic. I didn’t mention Colebatch you did, obviously because you or some other Union lackey had found “Discrepancies” that may or may not be real. I actually don’t care. I knew in the 60s that some of the Unions were anti Australian, thieves and rogues and nothing in later years has changed that view point.
Colebatch’s polemic dishonours the memory of these men
No it doesn’t. The main problem was the wharfies, not the mariners however, I will point out that the MUA has pretty well done themselves out of a job in more recent times just like the vehicle manufactures who managed to force GMH etc to ask themselves “Why should we continue to make cars in Australia while it has the most expensive work force and energy around?” courtesy of the unions and their political body, the ALP.
Go for it mate – 14 or 15 % who are union members will always agree with you. The rest see the rorting and outright theft of members money for what it is.
Talking about Colebatch listening to anecdotes and writing it without checking for facts, I think Dapin was just as guilty eh Kev.
And merchant mariners were a complete breed apart from the wharfies.
Perhaps – but Dapin didn’t have a political axe to grind.
I never said he had, read the post, not your ego.