UNION BUSTING BILLS
Ensuring Integrity Bill The Morrison government ignores rampant wage theft and bank fraud while pushing to criminalise union activity.
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cott Morrison’s Liberal/National government is trying to bring in a new law that will make it harder for unions to help members win pay rises and protect their jobs. In July 2019, the government introduced the so-called Ensuring Integrity Bill (EI Bill) into parliament. The EI Bill would give the government, employers, or any other party with a “sufficient interest”, the power to intervene in the running and work of unions. The Bill would make it easier to disqualify people from union office, block union mergers, restrict the use of funds or property of a union, and deregister unions. The Bill was examined by the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, which had to report to parliament by 25 October 2019. This is the Coalition’s second attempt to get this union-busting legislation adopted. An earlier version of the Bill was introduced in August 2017 but failed to get enough Senate support. Labor and the Greens oppose the current Bill, meaning the government needs the support of four of the six crossbench senators for it to become law. “Morrison has dusted off previously failed legislation to attack working people’s freedom to organise,” said MUA
National Secretary Paddy Crumlin. “The Australian union movement is already heavily regulated and the EI Bill goes further than any other Western democracy in interfering in democratic workers’ organisations. “The rights of workers to organise and for members to democratically run their unions is an internationally recognised human right. “Free unions are essential checks on the powerful in any democracy.” Paddy said the government had chosen to attack workers and their unions while turning a blind eye to millions of dollars lost to workers through wage theft. “The Bill is fundamentally unfair,” he said. “It would not apply to businesses who engage in wage theft, not apply to
What the EI Bill does The “Ensuring Integrity” Bill would allow the Registered Organisations Commission, the government or any person with a “sufficient interest” to apply to a court for a wide range of orders, including to: n deregister a union n disqualify persons from being an officer of a union n exclude certain types of people from being members of a union n suspend the rights and privileges of members or the union n restrict the use of funds or property of a union n appoint an administrator to take over management of the union. Also, the legislation would automatically disqualify a person from being an officer of a union for any offence under Australian or foreign law that is punishable by imprisonment for five years or more.
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bank fraud and not apply to politicians, despite their serious unethical conduct. “Members of Morrison’s own government have not been held to account despite their involvement in numerous scandals, such as ministers going to work for lobbyists, MPs hiding their investments from the public, and questionable uses of allowances. “If the Bill applied equally to corporations we would see banks, multinational pizza chains and the restaurants of celebrity chefs closed down for repeatedly breaking workplace laws, and their top executives sacked.” The Bill imposes a “public interest test” on mergers of unions, which takes the right to choose away from members. The merger provision is an apparent response to the failure of big business to prevent the MUA’s merger with the CFMEU in 2018. Currently, the main decider of whether two or more unions will merge is whether the majority of the members of the unions involved vote to approve the merger. The Bill requires the Fair Work Commission to consider the impact the merger will have on employers in an industry before deciding whether to allow a merger to go ahead. The general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, Sharan Burrow, called the EI Bill “an extraordinary act of vandalism really, in terms of the democratic rights and freedoms of Australia”. www.mua.org.au
