Pet puppies and the CFMEU
From employment stupidity to union corruption. Campaigning to compensate 'screwed' workers.
Talk about descending into an abyss of stupidity! Try this true tale.
A South Australian Employment Tribunal has awarded compensation to a council officer after she injured herself at home. The woman was working at home at the same time as she was looking after a friend’s pet puppy. She had erected a small fence in the home to keep the puppy away from her pet rabbit. She tripped over the fence when going to get a cup of coffee and broke her arm. The employer was held liable.
Alright, I suspect I can ‘hear’ the groans through my telepathic communication with you, my Substack followers. Yes, here surely is a stark real-life example of where the very concept of personal responsibility has been totally abandoned. So let’s see. If you’re a travelling salesperson who gets drunk while driving ‘while working’, you have a crash and kill someone, you’re not responsible. Your employer is?
To my mind, a central, necessary feature of a ‘civilised’ society is one in which we are free to do as we choose but we are held personally liable for our actions. When liability for our actions is transferred to another party, we debase ourselves as civilised humans. Yet this is the very essence of the ‘employment’ contract under which the bulk of people work. I say it’s a bad way of organising work. I tried to explain this in a step-by-step process in my book, Independence and the Death of Employment (2013). (Yes it’s still available on Amazon for $53.73!)
But more, as a concept, this legal construct has informed much of the social and legal thinking that’s now so evident in legislation and behaviour. That is, ‘someone else is to blame for me feeling bad about myself’. Let’s pass a law about it! And, ‘the state of my economic situation is the fault of the ancestors of my neighbour’. Let’s pass a law requiring my neighbour to pay me compensation! And on and on!
The saving grace that I still see around me is that, overwhelmingly, the bulk of people ignore such stupidity and do maintain a strong sense of personal responsibility. It’s the aberrations that make the news. But remember it’s bad law and the use of such law that enables the aberrations.
Would I do away with the employment contract tomorrow? You betcha! But I’m a realist and we have to work with the embedded ‘nonsense’ that surrounds us. But understand that that embedded nonsense can open doors to corruption. I have a tendency to ‘chase down’ alleged or potential corrupt practices that flow from Australia’s employment regulation system.
Over the last 12 months-or-so, I’ve been deep diving into the underpayment of coal miners in the New South Wales Hunter region and in Queensland. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a situation so glaringly corrupt. I last sent you an update on this in June this year, Unions stealing from workers. Here’s a quick recap.
It’s a common understanding in Australia that casual workers are paid a loading (normally 25 per cent) to ‘pay out’ the fact that they don’t receive holidays and so on. This casual loading is legally required under the vast bulk of industry-sector awards and enterprise agreements. Since around 2008-or-so, enterprise agreements have been ‘lawfully’ created which pay casual employed coal miners far less than the required casual loading, and frequently less than what a full-time employee earns.
Now some economists may argue that the underpayments are justified on the basis of ‘market forces’. Yeh, sure, but there’s a bigger concept that ‘markets’ must operate within—the bounds of the law, whether the law is good or bad!
In the case of these coal miners, the ‘normal’ application of employment law in Australia would require the coal miners to receive the 25 per cent loading. But the labour hire companies, and the union (the CFMEU, now rebranded as the MEU), agreed between them that the coal miners could be underpaid. They entered enterprise agreements to do this, and the Fair Work Commission authorised/endorsed the agreements. This situation surely has a stench of corruption about it!
Now I’m not in a position to make allegations about individual persons or organisations as to whether anyone in particular has been involved in corrupt behaviour to create the ‘wage theft’ underpayments. But at minimum there’s this simple fact.
Unions are supposed to look after the interests of their members. The enterprise agreements entered into by the union (the CFMEU/MEU) clearly and blatantly underpay casual coal miners. Yet the CFMEU/MEU signed off on these. How in the world could this occur unless there was significant corruption?
Earlier this year the CFMEU was put into administration because of major evidence of criminality rampant within it. In my role with the Independent Workers Union of Australia (IWUA) I have written to the administrator asking the administrator to do the following:
That you avail yourself of the content, arguments and evidence contained in the One Nation Report on this matter, specifically with a view to understanding the role of the CFMEU.
Investigate the historical activities of the CFMEU where the CFMEU either negotiated, oversaw, was aware of, approved, endorsed or was a party to the agreements.
Investigate whether there was any collusive activity by the CFMEU, officers of the CFMEU or persons associated with the CFMEU with other persons or entities which led to the underpayment of casual labour hire coal miners.
Given the alleged, extensive criminal activity within the CFMEU which justified your own appointment as administrator, that you investigate whether any criminal activity such as bribes (or other inducements) could have or were a feature of the CFMEU’s involvement with the enterprise agreements that resulted in underpayment of casual coal miners.
Given the extensive wealth of the CFMEU, investigate and consider whether, as administrator, you have at minimum a moral obligation to require the CFMEU to contribute financially to compensation to the coal miners who have been underpaid.
But here’s where I expect diversionary tactics. Even though the administrator has been set up under specific Commonwealth legislation, it appears that the administrator is not subject to parliamentary questioning. Further, the administrator has been restricted to investigating and overseeing the construction division of the union. The mining section of the union has been hived off from the CFMEU and has been rebranded as the Mining and Energy Union (MEU). That is, through a series of neat legal ‘tricks’ the government has made it possible for the administrator to avoid addressing coal miner underpayment issues. Does this smack of an orchestrated cover-up at the highest of political and commercial levels? That’s a question that deserves investigation.
I’ve now had direct and detailed contact with over 70 casual coal miners. These are good people. They are very aware that they have been ripped off over many years. Yet they are caught in a legal trap that is clearly a direct consequence of the activities of ‘their union’, the CFMEU/MEU.
I’ve now been able to undertake a number of assessments of the historical underpayments suffered by these coal miners. The number of assessments I’ve done is a tiny fraction of the actual ‘ripped off’ miners I believe have been affected (the number would well exceed 5,000 on my analysis).
In my position with IWUA I have lodged the underpayment assessments with the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO). And here’s some positive news. The FWO is treating the requests for investigation we’ve lodged with great seriousness and professionalism. There’s a long campaign ahead of us, but I’ll keep you informed of developments. Our objective is to have the coal miners compensated for the wage theft to which they have been subjected.
