Published: 6 Sep 2017
The ACTU and MUA have spoken out against the Turnbull Government’s extreme anti-worker agenda as evidenced by its Registered Organisations (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2017 that could be voted on in Parliament as early as this week.
In a rally on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra, ACTU Secretary Sally McManus, ALP Employment and Workplace Relations spokesman Brendan O’Connor and MUA Assistant National Secretary Ian Bray all spoke of the Government’s extreme agenda.
MUA members have been given the go ahead to conduct a ballot to approve their historic merger with the CFMEU and TCFUA.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) will conduct the ballot that will open on September 28 and close on November 23.
The proposed merger clearly and unambiguously preserves the financial, political and industrial identity of the MUA as a separate division while promoting and encouraging more effective use of resources in campaigns and organising.
The MUA and CFMEU are democratically elected organisations, whose members should determine their leadership and structure. It is not the role of Government to tell them who they can join with.
This is not similar to the ACCC looking at company mergers – as the Government has claimed - because the ACCC focuses on competition while the MUA and CFMEU operate in distinctly different labour markets.
The Government also says there should be a public interest test but only on unions. This smacks of an ideological witch hunt against Malcolm Turnbull and Michaelia Cash’s political opponents and is nothing more than union-bashing.
The Government’s so-called Ensuring Integrity Bill goes even further than the far-reaching recommendations of the extreme political bias of the Heydon Royal Commission against the trade union and labour movement.
It effectively obliges the extreme political offensive of the coalition of anti worker lobbies led by the Australian Mines and Metals Association (AMMA) and other peak employer bodies.
The press conference was carried live on the Save Australian Shipping Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/saveaustralianshipping/
