Sylvia Ruhl, Brisbane
As all comrades reading this are aware, recently on the 27th of August, simultaneous solidarity protests were held in solidarity with the CFMEU in seven cities across Australia. The CFMEU had officially played a role in organising the protests, but withdrew its participation the day before, telling workers that the industrial action was not authorised and therefore illegal according to the current labour relations regime. Despite this, tens of thousands of construction workers downed tools to protest the ALP government’s takeover of the construction arm of the CFMEU.
I briefly attended the Brisbane rally, though had to leave before the march began. However, I did gain an impression from my brief time there. There was a palpable disgust with the ALP. Obviously, this was the reason the rally was even called, but whatever speeches I caught snippets of, or signage I saw, made completely clear that Labor and Albanese are rightfully seen as traitors to the working class. It does not seem likely that trust will be rebuilt with the ALP anytime soon. This doesn’t mean that the workers movement, or even its most militant elements in the CFMEU, are ready, or even aware conscious of the need to break from the ALP-ACTU bureaucracy. It is nowhere near this point, nor will it be until a re-founded communist party guides it there through years of struggle within the labour movement.
The struggle today is a defensive one to protect the autonomy of the CFMEU from capitalist government control. The Labor Right-affiliated Australian Workers Union (AWU) have long been competing with the CFMEU for official representation of construction workers at Cross River Rail (CRR) sites, a project that is centred around a new six-kilometre commuter rail tunnel under the Brisbane River. The AWU are the imposed representatives by the bosses in CPB Contractors, the firm organising CRR construction.
The AWU are appallingly moderate; they are opposed to workers’ militancy, and their entrenchment at the expense of the CFMEU would represent a massive setback for the ability of construction workers to represent and advocate for themselves. Negligence has resulted in multiple deaths and injuries of workers at CRR sites over the past two years. A worker died after falling through scaffolding at a CRR site with known and unresolved safety issues in July last year. Another had died of heat stroke in his car after working through extreme heat and humidity. Multiple other injuries, and near misses have occurred. The CFMEU has taken a leading role in militating against the corporate corner-cutting responsible for deaths on CRR despite its lack of official status; the AWU however is nowhere to be found. Were the CFMEU’s construction division to be permanently and decisively captured by Labor, workers will in the immediate future would be left without a large union, or a workers’ party, that actively struggles for their safety. CFMEU autonomy, is quite literally a matter of life or death.
PARTISAN! 