During one of the speeches that preceded the screening of Constructing Fear last night at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne, it was pointed out that both the ABC and SBS were unwilling to have a look at the original version of the documentary, let alone fund it.
The inference was clear; the broadcasters didn’t want anything to do with a film about workers fighting for their rights in today’s industrial relations climate.
The documentary focused on a number of cases in which CFMEU members raised issues such as workplace safety and then found themselves sacked or up before the Australian Building Construction Commission (ABCC) for their trouble.
While the movie raised some interesting points about the eroding of workers’ rights under the Howard Government, and the coercive and undemocratic nature of the ABCC, it was too simplistically rendered to have much of an impact on the viewer.
While it’s easy to represent the ABCC and builders (a builder was interviewed in front of his luxurious pool) as bad guys, it seemed either naive or a bit cheeky for the director to position the CFMEU as purer than a Catholic nun.
“Fuck ‘em, we’re the good guys”, maintained one worker.
Surely it wouldn’t have done any harm to the notion that workers’ rights should be protected if a bit of footage from the colourful history of the building unions had been included.
However, since Constructing Fear was funded by the CFMEU that probably wasn’t an option.
It was interesting that a movie about a traditional blue-collar union had an attractive young mum as its “star”.
The shots of her embracing her son could’ve come straight from Today Tonight, although credit should be given to the filmmakers for trying to make a picture with broad appeal.
Anyway, you can judge Constructing Fear for yourself because it’s available for download from the film’s website.
Teh unions are another example of a government scapegoat in a society best characterised as “trial by spin”.
The union and its doco have a parallel to Media Watch; under assault elsewhere- kneecapped, underfunded and under expertised; a pee-shooter standing alone against the serried artillery of ideologicised government, corporate media and business, no threat at all in a cognitive landscape of sensitized people resembling peasants in a medieval Aristotelian scholastic world.
Crosby/ Textor backed by oxymoronic “Thinkthanks” and routinely and corruptly leaked government and corporate funding. And people buy the union thug bit through repetition, in the end.
The unions no doubt are imperfect creatures themselves. Creatures of the system that created them, in their tee shirts with their grumpy overcompensating masculinity, they sometimes seem ridiculous. And, tell the truth, the real working class is exiled out of sight, out of mind in places like Manilla or Bangalore. I personally can never forgive the Forestry Division of the CFMEU for running Brownshirt for the corrupt cabal of Tasmanisan woodchipping.
But the unions are part of a ramshackle Foolgarah “Rainbow Coalition” including some feminists and intellectuals, Greens hippies, indigenes, migrants and other alienated slightly less brainwashed than the rest. That is, the frail repository of the last of socio- cultural “memory” not yet drowned in consumerism, neoliberalism and Hansonism, on the Road to the Alzheimers of fascist Serfdom..
Well you’ve got Sharan Burrow nailed there.
Well Greg M, that’s a helpful contribution. Really adds to a discussion about ( problems of ) symbolism, meta-language and the problems a community faces under attack from a parasitic professional spinning class.
Its no accident that Burrow is the true face of working class Australia.
The point is, she is not the aspect dwelled upon in massive right wing propaganda campaigns by bigots like The Mad Monk, Hendy, Hockey and co and that lying, grasping creature, Barbara Bennett.
Now that’s my last say. Am off to watch fascinating match of footy on teev.
Gaaaaaarnarrrggggs!!!!
God help the Australian working class if that were true, which it is not. Union membership is in freefall and has been since long before Howard’s Workchoices legislation. Less than 23% of Australian workers are union members, and less than 15% of workers in the private sector belong to a union. Clearly Australian workers are sending the union movement a message by voting with their feet, as is their democratic right, enshrined in an international treaty, no less. It is less clear whether the unions are listening. The unions’ association with the upcoming APEC demonstrations with their inevitable acts of wanton violence directed against the police won’t impress too many Australian workers and send them rushing back to join the fold. Of course Howard, master wedge politician that he is, knows this and no doubt sees a few votes in it for himself.
Greg M, that 23% fugure is very misleading. To get a true figure of how workers’ feet are voting, you need to take out all those sections of the workforce that cannot realistically be organised. Once that’s done, it’s almost surprising how many people still want to belong to a union - especially in a climate where active union membership can often mean victimisation or losing your job.
I agree that it’s your right not to join a union (we all have a right to be stupid and not know where our true interests lie), but I regard my right to be represented by a union to be a basic democratic freedom. Full stop.
GregM, how do you know in advance that there will be violence at the APEC demonstrations, and that unions will be involved in that?
The police you’re so concerned about are all members of unions and quite passionate supporters of the concept.
And more 2 million Australians chose to belong to unions. It’s hardly a minority movement.
Greg W;
“…acts of wanton violence directed against the police…”
I think you meant:
“acts of wanton violence directed BY the police..”.
Will watch for a furious Burrow clobbering a big burly NSW police sergeant with a cadboard placade. If Burrow is dinkum working class she will have spotted ‘globalisation’ in the devalued neoliberal form fobbed off on us off by the bosses already, and years ago. Sharan’s behaviour tends to indicate the case conclusively and for quite some time already, actually.
As to how I know that there will be violence at the APEC demonstrations see the thread on fences water cannons and protests. Will unions be involved in that? No, not generally although a few of the violent demonstrators will probably be union members. However most unionists and certainly their leadership will strongly deplore any violence both on principle and because they will see it as counterproducive to making the points they want to have made. That won’t stop Howard from tarnishing them by association. I suspect that he’s counting on it as being the real success of the APEC meeting because any violence at APEC will be fresh in the public’s mind when they go to vote. His second (or is it third) Tampa, sort of.
This doesn’t appear to me to be responsive to Darlene’s post. Please try to stay on topic.
Much as I’d enjoy the spectacle and I am sure that she’d be up to the job that’s one thing we won’t see. But that won’t stop John Howard and his chorus, led by the Mad Monk, acting as if she had.
Righto, Mark, back on topic.
An inference that should not be drawn. From Darlene’s account the whole film is just an advertising puff for the CFMEU right down to casting its members as being purer than a Catholic nun. The ABC is banned by legislation from carrying advertising and therefore it is not at all surprising, and indeed quite appropriate, that they would not have wanted to have anything to do with it.
I do admire the chutzpah of the CFMEU, though, in not only wanting the ABC to show their advertisement but to pay for it. Usually it’s the other way round; the advertiser pays to have its advertisement run.
GregM, just out of curiosity, do you personally know any trade union officials, delegates or activists?
There could be good reasons for the ABC not to show the doco, but what I do know is that there has been a lot of government harassment for what is perfectly legitimate union activity in the building industry - and it’s been grossly under-reported by the media. I even remember Alan Jones of all people sticking up for victimised workers.
How much did the goverment spend on its inquisition into the building unions? $66 million dollars? How many people were charged with any kind of offence? I understand one person - an employer.
P.S. I’m a union member and I’ve been to my fair share of rallies, and I’ve always tried to treat the police with courtesy and a sense of humour - whether it was likely to be reciprocated or not (mostly it is).
To satisfy your curiosity, yes, I know hundreds of them. I worked with them over my career and count a number of them as my friends. There are plenty of others for whom I developed a great respect for their sincerity, commitment and competence. There were still plenty of others for whom I did not develop that respect for I did not see one of those attributes and, in a few, any of them.
A question for you. What do you think is legitimate union activity in the building industry? Bringing strippers onto a worksite to celebrate the end of an industrial dispute which one CFMEU organiser did on one of my sites in the late 1980s? He even had the cheek to want us to pay for the time of the “stop-work meeting” at which they performed.
I’m not getting stuck into unions over this. There were some employers in the construction industry who were complete pr*cks who deserved to be driven out of business (I have one in particular in mind for whom I hope, athiest that I am, that here is in fact a hell in which he will burn for eternity) but my experience has relieved me of the starry-eyed illusions that you have about unions.
As Ive said before, while membership is 25% or whatever, twice that number actually rely on and benefit from union negotiated EBAs or awards.
Unions remain very relevant to Australian workplaces. Given the free-rider problem, membership levels are hardly a useful indicator of their utility.
Giving employers an effective veto over collective bargaining, as workchoices has done, demonstrates that the federal government doesnt believe the “union irrelevance” line either, any more than I do.
The Orwellian Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act 2005 is fascist, pure and simple.
New Matilda provdes a succinct summary of the fascist elements of Howard’s legislation:
Unions are voluntary incorporated organisations with constitutional provisions for participative democracy by all financial members. They are more democratic in form and constitution than the Parliamentary Liberal Party.
“An inference that should not be drawn. From Darlene’s account the whole film is just an advertising puff for the CFMEU right down to casting its members as being purer than a Catholic nun. The ABC is banned by legislation from carrying advertising and therefore it is not at all surprising, and indeed quite appropriate, that they would not have wanted to have anything to do with it.”
Well, I think it is an inference that can be drawn because they didn’t even bother to look at it. I don’t think the film was of sufficient quality to appear on the TV, however.
I support unionism and unions (and it annoys me that some people get benefits while others are paying their way), however, some unions have some pretty dubious practices. Yes, the ABCC is pretty bad, but the unions aren’t lily white.
I would have thought that a film by the CFMEU about the CFMEU would be a no-brainer for the ABC to decide they could have nothing to do with it because it is advertising. They didn’t need to look at it to work out that under the Act under which they operate they could not show it because of the ban on advertising.
This is no different from how they should respond if Rio Tinto turned up with a doco, which it had funded itself, on the joys of working in the Western Australian mines showing scenes of all the happy campers on AWAs. You wouldn’t expect them to show that, would you?
No of course not.
I think this was before the makers got funding from the CFMEU. I think the CFMEU saved the project as it were.
However, no I think a film that was so one-sided was never going to be a goer.
More to the point, GregM, we wouldn’t expect the ABC to even consider broadcasting such a program. And fair enough, too.
Cheers
BBB
Union leaderships have historically had a short back’n’sides attitude towards cultural products which they fund. In the late 1980s/early 1990s the ACTU commissioned Tom Zubrycki to make a film about the history of the Australian trade union movement. The ACTU Executive withdrew its support for the film when it viewed the resulting product, Among Equals, and the film was never shown apart from some private screenings to concerned activists who, whilst not unanimous on the merits of the film, could not comprehend the ACTU Executive’s decision to effectively ban it. Apparently Zubrycki’s crime was that the film disclosed that Australian unions had gone on strike and had elected communist officials at various times in their history, and this didn’t gel with the squeaky-clean image which the Accord-era ACTU leadership was trying to create for the union movement.
Similarly, former CFMEU official Tom McDonald discloses, in his and his wife Audrey’s joint autobiography Intimate Union, how the CFMEU Construction Division leadership in the early 1990s peremptorily withdrew cooperation from an academic who it had commissioned to write a history of the Construction Division and its predecessor organisations, in the process doing some harm to his academic career, because his output looked like it was going to stray from the correct line.
In fairness I must say that in both of these cases there were no shortage of union critics of the union leaderships concerned (including McDonald’s criticism of his old union’s rough treatment of the academic). Also, during the late 90s and early Noughties, the leaderships of the ACTU, the Victorian Trades Hall Council, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Mining & Energy Division of the CFMEU were unstinting and unconditional in their cooperation with my Doctoral research, which more than compensated for the Queensland AWU’s indecent haste to refuse my request for its assistance.
Thanks for that, Paul. Very interesting.
Yes, there are plenty of union critics, however, a history that omits things is not much of a history. I simply think the latest effort was pretty poor, but as I said others can judge because it can be downloaded.
Mmmm, connecting this post with another; I can’t help feeling that unions and the good ‘ol Bra Boys have things in common.
Looks like the meatworkers st Murgon in the South Burnet have just learned an expensive lession in the value of unions.
Katz,
Just to add some balance to the picture - company directors and others, when called before an ASIC enquiry, are compelled to answer under exactly these conditions - and have been so compelled since the late 1980s. Evidence gathered at these enquiries can then be used in the investigatory process. See sections 19 through 21(3) of the ASIC Act 2001 for the current version of those provisions.
I do not like the denial of the right to silence any more than you do, but these conditions are not unique and do lag behind (depending on your perspective of ahead / behind) those conditions that the building industry are now under.
They are by no means unique in Australian law and only seem to attract adverse publicity (dare I say from those sympathetic to the unions) when directed against particular groups. There was nary a peep from the “Left” (to use a term I do not like) IIRC when these provisions were added into the Corporations Law as part of the “reform” process under Hawke.
If they can (or should) be used against company big-wigs who may be suspected or accused of purely financial crimes then, to me at least, they should be able to be used against those suspected or accused of crimes of violence or industrial crime.
More unrest flying around?
I care little what other lefties may or may not think. I am as appalled by Stalinism as I am by fascism.
This leftie is opposed to any fascistic program of pschological torture.
Good to hear, Katz. Shall we start up the Popular Front for the Restoration of the Right to Silence and Natural Justice - the PFRRSNJ?
Maybe a better name will be needed.
I would have a lot more sympathy with a campaign that was targeted at restoring these rights for all Australians rather than just a few.
Katz: “I care little what other lefties may or may not think. I am as appalled by Stalinism as I am by fascism. …This leftie is opposed to any fascistic program of psychological torture.”
Good for you, pal. Seriously. If more people on all sides were as forthright as this, we’d have that fewer things to trouble us. Rock on.
Well, thanks folks.
Very gratified by your kind words.
A little nonplussed that my sentiments come as something of a surprise to two of my more favourite interlocutors.
Not a surprise that it comes from you, Katz - but I would like to see such logical consistency from a few others in the blogosphere.
Some of you really do make me laugh.
Am suposed to ignore the ideological history of western society over the last twenty years and accompanying Gadarene rush towards a fashionista “Stepford World” version of 1984, blindly acepting acept what’s been happening as merely acidental or anomolous?
I’ll say it again. SBS and MW are not anomolous, they are paradigmatic.
The last couple of posters can now move back to the large screen, pick up their bottles of gin and resume their brainwashed adulation of Big Brother.
“repent all ye who enter here”.
Gee Paul,
I have read much more comprehensible English in reports written by McKinsey and targeted at Government Ministers. You seem to have missed a possible occupation there.
Perhaps you can also update me on Big Brother, Paul. Where has he been since 1984?
GregM, I suspect you’re not such a bad bloke.
I wouldn’t defend everything every trade union official, delegate, or member has ever done. By all means police wrong-doing in the union movement (in fact, as someone who cares a lot about the union movement, I think anyone who embarrasses unions should be drummed out). But that’s not Howard’s agenda. He wants to crush unions - the good and the bad. Full stop. It’d be akin to saying a whole lot of white-collar crime happens, so lets abolish private enterprise.
And what about injuries I’ve sustained at work because my employer didn’t take OH&S seriously enough? I rank that a little higher than strippers.
I come back to my point: the right to be represented by unions is a basic democratic freedom, end of story. Soidarity in Poland fought the communists for basic rights like these. People might not like union officials with big beer bellies, but you’ll miss unions when they’re gone…..you’ll also miss weekends, living wages, holidays, safe workplaces and a lot else. Trust me.
And I’m not starry-eyed about unions or any other human institution. In fact, I support unions because I have a pretty hard-headed and realistic view of the depths to which people can sink (why else would you join a union?).
GB, there is nothing you have written that I disagree with- especially the bit about me being not such a bad bloke.
I have no brief for Howard and his Workchoices legislation. I have never posted anything in favour of it (although having been recently required to read the thing in depth I find that it does have a few good points) and you are quite right that its purpose is to crush the union movement, along with the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and the State industrial relations systems. It is a very cleverly constructed piece of legislation- too clever by half in fact. In creating a situation that made the lowest paid workers vulnerable to exploitation without redress Howard got stuck into every teenage kid holding down a casual job, and that p*sses off not just the kid but his/her dad and mum and there’s at least three votes against the Libs straight away. No wonder Labor has got such a commanding lead in the polls.
I agree with you that the right to be represented by unions is a basic right, but that is not, as you say End Of Story. It is the right of freedom of association. That right also encompasses the right not to be represented by a union if you don’t want to be and, where that is your choice, for you to go about your affairs without them interfering in your relationship with your employer. People who don’t join unions may be, as you think, fools but it’s their life and they have the right to live it as they see fit, even foolishly if they choose.
I wouldn’t overstate the good that unions do, though. I’ve seen plenty of union officials do a lot of good but I’ve seen some pretty ordinary behaviour from some of them, often with the best of intentions, where they were locked into inflexible thinking which meant that they achieved bad outcomes for their members. That’s not to criticise them as unions as such, that’s just them being human and I’ve seen plenty of managers who are as bad or worse. However there are some unions, and overall in my experience the CFMEU wasn’t among them, but my experience with the CFMEU and its predecessor the BWIU was a long time ago, which, to put it very euphemistically, skated on thin ice as to legality.
I doubt too that, in the current economic climate, that the absence of unions would mean that weekends, living wages, holidays et al would disappear. It’s a seller’s market for labour out there at the moment.
I’m much less sure on safety. Even the best OH&S system needs a highly responsive independent reality check and government health and safety officers don’t cut it. Union supported and nominated health and safety reps do, in my experience. Most managers, in my experience, don’t have a “feel” for safety and that is what is needed, along with a commitment to act on that feel, to really make a workplace safe. Workers and their on-site representatives, supported by independent unions make a big difference.
Finally, though, what is it that you have against union officials with big beer bellies? Some of the very best ones I have dealt with had big beer bellies, although there were some scrawny ones who were good too.
I haven’t seen the doco but I know, very well, one of the CFMEU Officials in it. He admits that it is outright propaganda preaching to the choir.
That’s why the ABC and SBS wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.
Timmy K is a legend!!
Agree with much of that, GregM. Generally speaking, I think workers and their unions should put themselves in the shoes of their employers and not take an inflexible, bloody-minded attitude. But that’s really not the problem in a lot of (most?)workplaces today.
I work on what I guess you’d call the bottom rungs of the employment ladder, in a manual job, and from where I stand most employees are very generous towards their boss. I see a lot of people letting too many things slide - things like OH&S issues, unpaid overtime. Workers are very altruistic in this country.
I’m reminded of that George Bernard Shaw quote: “All progress depends upon the unreasonable man”. Occasionally you do have to stick up for yourself. The reason we need unions is that in reality most of us are conformists and don’t.
P.S. You don’t design an entire IR system on the basis of what can always be a very temporary “sellers market”, which I don’t concede exists at the moment anyway for most workers - not for those who are just in the average range of marketable skills, don’t have the option to up stumps and become a miner in WA.
Bingo bango bongo: “Gee paul I have read much more comprehensible…” and so on.
Sorry, are we here to talk about my english or the IR issue and derivation and formulation of ideology?
Come back when you are past the adhominems and ready to discuss issues.
“I haven’t seen the doco but I know, very well, one of the CFMEU Officials in it. He admits that it is outright propaganda preaching to the choir.”
No point preaching to the choir if you want to change hearts and minds, though.
Paul,
Not BBB - me, as a cursory read of the name above the comment would reveal.
I would be happy to debate an issue - the problem is that I cannot identify one in (what I perceive to be) that mish-mash of jargon and archaic language. Some clarity in your point or points would be appreciated. Perhaps you could enlighten those of us engaged in the “Gadarene rush” regarding what exactly you mean. Am I Legion, or just one of the pigs?
Yes, the latter.
Paul,
Considering, according to you, I am both engaged in “brainwashed adulation of Big Brother” and a pig, perhaps the request to go “past the adhominems and [be] ready to discuss issues” is a bit of hypocrisy. Happy to discuss the issues, as mentioned, but perhaps a request by me for you to withdraw the ad hominems would not be out of order - particularly as I have always (successfully) resisted the Siren call of “reality tv” and am not a member of the genus “Sus”.
If you truly want to discuss the issues, please withdraw and then make a point on which you wish to engage.
Darlene - I’m pretty sure the CFMEU ascribe to the theory that if you’ve got ‘em by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.
Timmy K has since left the CFMEU, following a punch up with another CFMEU employee in Kevin Reynolds’ office. What a great bunch of guys and gals!
Looks like paul has decided that ad hominems and jargon is all he has. Pity - it could have been interesting.