The CFMEU threatened my father, they've threatened many fathers.
The powerful Unions have been the backdrop of Australian life since I was a child in the 80’s, much longer than that in fact. All our lives have been and are heavily impacted by them. My childhood was affected in ways I did not even understand till I was a little older. My father was an executive in a large residential home building business in the 80’s. The unions were pushing to unionise the residential space in the same way as they took a strangle-hold on commercial and civil, with extreme force. Thuggish, corrupt and nasty.
I did not understand why Dad always looked under the car before turning it on. Why he would peer subtly through the blinds at that car across the road. He never showed us how genuinely afraid he was for his life, our lives. He was threatened, multiple times, as were his children – my sister and me. I once remember being on a job site with Dad on a Saturday (which kids could do in those days -we learned a lot).
I remember his ordinarily gentle giant, 6 foot 5, backhoe driver, Marco (a small business owner, a sub-contractor) being held down by 4 men, including my father as he was ranting, screaming about the destruction of his family, at the two smug British born, toothless union reps. Marco was threatening to break their necks like a chicken – he meant it. The other boys on site held him down for the good of the union reps. They were trying to force the end of sub-contracting, it would have destroyed Marco's small business. It made a lot of great hard-working men and women scared. The Unions would have destroyed their business, forced building businesses - head contractors - to take on more staff and force those staff to be unionised.
They also had other silly ideas like full toilet blocks and lunchrooms on every residential home site, 2 full-size containers on an 800 sqm block, madness. This was both impractical and unnecessary, they already looked after their workers, they had access to everything they needed. It would just increase the cost of housing for the rest of us. Putting even more pressure on small and medium builders (who do the bulk of the work). They wanted to force unionisation in residential construction. Not for the good of the workers, businesses or home buyers, simply to the useless benefit of unions. Had they have been successful, the residential home building industry would have collapsed.
It is hard enough to build homes, through planning, managing supply, managing labour, out in the elements and through the red tape. The unions have certainly had their impact on residential home builders, the cost of Australian manufactured goods is through the roof, the safety regulations - on the borderline of insane (not at all about safety), and their broader impact on industry drives up the price of labour and more.
They seldom think about the impact of their horrendous and foolhardy ideas on the long-term health of the industry they impose on. At least I hope they don’t - because of the impacts of the things they do, that is in itself is a cause for concern. Either way like any cancer the bigger and stronger they get the more likely it is they will kill their host (like the time they completely wrecked touring cars – another story).
Residential construction is a tough business. Commercial, civil and industrial construction is equally tough. Only there the job is made even tougher by a corrupt and thuggish union. Forced unionism drive up prices; adds silly extra costs and rules; influences and meters out regulation; and they are beyond scrutiny and reproach. Unions hold business and Government to ransom, they get the protection of the law because, well, the Australian Labor Party. The Labor Party are the Unions, the Unions are the ALP, there is no distinguishing them. They make favourable law for the Union, which in turn backs Labor, who then provide top cover for the Union when in Government. It is putrid and corrupt.
The most disgusting Union is the #CFMEU. The CFMEU seem to have taken their flags off the cranes today (I wanted to snap a picture for this post, and they were all down). They should hang their heads in shame. I don’t think the workers themselves even want to be a part of it. They are co-opted by force. I believe the CFMEU increase the cost and complexity of providing housing, public buildings, commercial towers and just about every other built thing. This is bad for Australia and Australians.
Surely it is time the CFMEU be closed down, completely, something new can form in its place, not affiliated with the Labor Party. One that puts the status of the worker first, ahead of political ambition, ahead of bribery, ahead of crime. One that advocates for the membership and understands that running a business is not magic; that most business owners try to do the right thing by the people that work for them.
In fact, the relationship between the Labor Party and all the unions should be broken across the board, across the nation. It is insane that the Labor Government can be affiliated so closely with a lobby group so powerful it can shut whole industries down. So powerful it can reach directly into the public service and cause strikes to embarrass ministers of a different political persuasion.
That they can run super funds that advocate for bananas DEI and ESG nonsense - ruining the companies they own. Unions, Industry Super funds and the Labor Party are not about people anymore, they are about power, money and influence, nothing more. They export jobs and opportunity; they destroy entrepreneurship and ruin the concept of reward for risk. They will bankrupt Australia, left the way it is, there will be no Australia left for the next generation, it is that bad. Time for a big rethink. #Auspol #ALP #Labor #Sekta