Stealing from the workers: Part 2 - Deal making politics

The report into the wage theft from coal miners has big implications for Australia's political establishment.

My Substack post from last week Stealing from the workers - A union agenda has attracted strong readership numbers.

Just to remind you, what I’ve discussed is possibly the largest wage theft scam in Australia. And it involves the construction union, the CFMEU, and was ‘signed off’ by the Fair Work Commission.

The victims of the wage theft are thousands of coal miners in Southern Queensland and the Hunter Valley in New South Wales employed as casuals through labour hire companies to work in the coal mines. On average, the workers have had duded from them $32,745 a year (on 2023 assessments) when working an average of 44 hours a week spread over 24/7, 365 days-a-year rosters.  

Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash

The calculations are reasonably straightforward. The wage theft is calculated by looking at what the workers should have received under the Black Coal Industry Award compared with what they are paid under the labour hire enterprise agreements. The CFMEU is a party to the agreements which have been approved by the Fair Work Commission.

My summary above is taken directly from the Senate speech by One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts on 7 February this year. In his speech he launched One Nation’s report into the wage theft scam. Note that ‘wage theft’, ‘scam’ and so on are terms applied to the report’s findings by Senator Roberts.

During this last week One Nation released:

·      The full 10,000-word report.

·      The excel spreadsheet calculation for what miners should have earned under the award.

·      The five key labour hire enterprise agreements that formed the comparative assessment.

In addition, Senator Roberts questioned the Fair Work Commission, the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Workplace Relations Minister’s Senate representative in Senate Estimates. You can watch the questions and responses at these links:

·      Fair Work Commission:

·      Fair Work Ombudsman:

Further, Senator Roberts has issued a challenge to the Fair Work Commission, the CFMEU and the employers and their representatives to disprove the report and its calculations. My expectation is that ‘push-back’ will come primarily from employers. The reason for my expectation is my long-held observation about what Australia’s industrial relations system is really about.

The real ‘secret’ of Australia’s industrial relations system is that, for decades, unions have colluded with selected big businesses to manipulate market access for those businesses and to give those ‘friendly’ businesses advantageous industrial relations arrangements over competitors. This has been documented in the retail and transport sectors in the past. The ‘worker-bosses’ alleged ‘war’ is in truth a smokescreen for what really goes on.

What’s staggered me is that this One Nation report provides a level of factual detail on what really happens not seen before. It provides solid evidence, that will be hard to refute, that casual coal workers are being paid substantially less than they should be paid under the award. It’s a worker and Australian community scam.

The report and support documents are here.

There are major implications in this report for the Coalition’s (Libs/Nats) future.

In February, Liberal Leader Peter Dutton is reported to have declared that ‘the Liberals and Nationals were the parties of the Australian working class…’ and ‘we’re not the party of big business…’

Here’s a test for ‘working class’ Liberal Dutton. In presenting its report, One Nation moved a Senate Bill/amendment to stop the coal miners’ wage theft and to compensate the workers. Compensation would have to be paid equally by the labour hire companies, the CFMEU and the Fair Work Commission—that is, by the parties who, on One Nation’s evidence, organised and/or enabled the theft. Dutton’s Coalition voted with Labor to defeat the Bill/amendment.

If Dutton were serious about his ‘working class’ credentials, he would urgently download the One Nation report, study it personally and, if found credible, adopt the One Nation legislative fix as policy for the next election. 

For a Dutton Coalition seeking to reinvent itself, to ignore this wage theft report is to fail a fundamental, serious test. If, as this report asserts, the CFMEU has colluded with big business in organising the theft, is Dutton prepared to back workers over big business? Just where does he stand?

But there are also huge implications for the internal politics of the Labor movement in Australia, including the politics of ‘wokism,’ Marxism, and Labor’s capturing and ‘remaking’ of Australian capitalism. Let me explain my perspective.

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