The CFMEU crisis is a crisis for the whole labour movement. We call on all those in the movement who want to rebuild a militant union tradition to look reality square in the face and work together to explore ways forward.
Labor Tribune editors want to get the discussion going here.
Six principles for CFMEU renewal
- Oppose administration. No state intervention in union affairs.
- Oppose criminality. Bring in expulsion rule for demonstrated association with known criminals.
- All delegates and union officials to be elected, including safety officers.
- All paid officials to earn no more than a skilled member.
- Oppose the Fair Work Act and its anti-labour provisions preventing a workers’ right to withdraw their labour over any matter deemed important by the union.
- A culture to unite the membership against racism, sexism, nationalism.
Preamble
The building unions of Australia have long been the bedrock for militant activity of the working class against capitalism. Not only for the construction industry itself, but as champions of the working class as a class.
From the stonemasons winning the eight-hour day, through to world-first safety wins, the removal of asbestos and other dangerous materials from the industry, significant and ongoing pay increases, the Green Bans, equality for women on the job, solidarity with First Nations peoples and militant internationalism against apartheid and militarism – building unions have been at the forefront of winning real gains for the working class while always keeping an eye on the main prize of defeating the system of capitalist exploitation of our labour.
With the collapse of the Communist Party and related organisations – and the long period since the 1990s where neoliberalism triumphed amid a world order where ‘there is no alternative’ but capitalism – the political basis of the building unions withered away.
Combined with the emergence of a banal managerialism in the union leadership, this opened the gates to the forces of barbarism, ever present in the industry, allowing them to win footholds in our union.
The ACTU and the managerial class in the unions initially denied there was a problem. And when it finally recognised there was criminality, rather than turn to the membership and the broader working class movement, it turned to the blunt and hostile tool of the capitalist state to try to cut the head off the snake.
This approach has not and cannot provide a solution.
Our work must be guided by an overall program for the whole working class seeking to gain political power. This in turn informs our strategy and our tactics.
Programmatic approach
For a membership-led, democratic, militant and independent industrial union in the construction industry that fights for the economic, social and political interests of its members and the working class as a whole.
Strategic approach
In the context of administration by the state and continued influence of organised crime, Marxist activists in the construction industry must establish a team that can democratically win leadership of the union and retake it from the hands of the administrators and the criminal elements that have emerged in NSW and Victoria.
It cannot support the capitalist state management of working class organisations, but it must use the space created by the administrator to organise in order to remove the administration as quickly as possible and to deny the re-emergence of a criminal-influenced leadership.
We oppose class collaboration, whether that be with spivs in suits running legal corporations or with criminal and gangster bosses using our industry to launder money gained by selling drugs to working class kids.
The best way to keep the criminals at bay and rebuild a union independent of the craven managerialism rife in the ALP is through a militant rejection of dead-end reformism, craven managerial administration, and in staunch opposition to criminal and corrupt behaviour.
An emergent militant CFMEU leadership should see as its goal to revitalise the entire labour movement along democratic-republican class-struggle lines. This also involves combating the toxic bullying and hyper-sexist culture in some unions; it involves combating the vapid managerialism dominant in most other unions.
We fight for internationalism, democratic-republicanism, socialism and working class power.
Tactical approach
‘We want our union back – freed from the administrators and the crooks’
Establish a leadership and organisational structure in waiting, guided by these principles.
Agitate for elections and the removal of the administrator.
Map the sector’s main jobs and identify leaders and establish cells in each major workplace.
Initiate a rank-and-file bulletin that reports on workplace safety, culture, cost of living and housing pressures, and fights for the principles in this document.
Push for an anti-liberal ‘anti-woke’ culture that unites the membership against racism, sexism, nationalism and other forms of chauvinism.
To achieve an independent, militant class struggle union, we must hold to:
- Independence from the state; independence from the bosses; independence from crooks
- Remove the union from administration as quickly as practicable
- Opposition to state interference in the affairs of unions as a principle
- A socialist objective for the union
- Union officials to be paid no more than the skilled workers they represent
- Term limits for union officials
- Union officials to be recallable and sackable by the rank and file
- All officials, delegates and safety officers to be elected
- Bar members becoming delegates or officials who are associated with criminal enterprises
- Socialist and militant education of members
- Against bullying, sexism, racism, nationalism and all forms of discrimination and chauvinism
- Opposition to the Fair Work Act and its limitations on the rights of unions to organise and the rights of workers to withdraw their labor
- Affiliation to the ALP and ACTU to fight for socialism and the above principles.