Issued by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Organisation
The entire bourgeois class and its loyal foot-soldiers in the workers movement are whipping up a frenzy concerning the Construction, Forestry, and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU). This onslaught started in the wake of the resignation of convicted domestic harasser and alleged wife-beater John Setka following an investigation published in the bourgeois press. The months-long investigation into CFMEU corruption has the enemies of the working class elated as they seize the opportunity to finally rid themselves of the continent’s largest and most militant union.
The first act of this new campaign against Australia’s building workers was the placing of the Victorian branch of the CFMEU under state administration under the auspices of the corporatist FairWork Commission. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has suspended the unions’s construction wing, and in turn the union was suspended wholesale from the Australian Labor Party (ALP) - a factional victory for the right wing of the Party. The Albanese government has even hinted at deregistering the union altogether; a throwback to how the Hawke government busted the Builders Labourers Federation that preceded the CFMEU. This would throttle the bargaining power of over one hundred thousand workers in this country, throwing away their safety, democratic representation, and gains for the insatiable vultures of the chattering classes. The working class must resolutely oppose any and all attempts by the state to repress, manage, or administer the trade union movement.
However, the jackals in the Australian federal government and the bourgeois press are not the only opponents of working class power. There is no doubt that the leadership of the CFMEU has long been in bed with criminal elements in the building industry. This long standing friendship included granting underworld figures high office within the union, and forcing construction companies to use labour from criminal networks to facilitate money laundering. Through the standover tactics of these newfound friends, the CFMEU has been able to make occasional gains whilst relying less on the necessary militating and organising of workers. In fact, the leadership regularly acts to restrain its own members from carrying out industrial action, requiring them to be content with the opportunities permitted to do so by the union itself. It is no secret that the CFMEU often gets good results for its members, in terms of wages and conditions. However, these gains are more through the opportunistic relationship between the union and the construction section than through militant class struggle.
This paralysis on the part of the CFMEU’s opportunist elite has tainted the union’s already economistic outlook with a right-populist character. Additionally, fascist Ustasha sympathisers friendly with Setka have embedded themselves in the union under his purview. Aside from being violent and generally thuggish, these elements openly celebrate the Nazi-collaborator regime that bloodied Croatia during the Holocaust. It should go without saying that such proudly chauvinist elements must be expelled from any workers’ organisation worthy of the name, and the CFMEU has clearly failed in this basic task.
The position of communists is that trade unions, absent a militant, class struggle orientation and a communist politics, are simple economic organisations that do not fundamentally threaten the capitalist order. While more militant than most, and definitely despised by the ravenous haute bourgeoisie, the CFMEU remains a conservative, economistic trade union which lies in bed with some of the most atavistic layers of the middle bourgeois. These relationships will need to be smashed if the working class, in all industries, is to advance towards their emancipation.
Resolution
The Revolutionary Communist Organisation (RCO) opposes all state intervention into the trade union movement. No administration, no deregistration! The entire workers movement must unite to oppose any attempt to deregister the CFMEU.
Workers Must Clean Their Own House! For a workers inquiry into corruption in the trade union movement, with emergency elections contested by rank and file tickets held to replace the current leadership. All fascist gangsters and their collaborators must be barred from standing in union elections.
Down with the bureaucrats! Out with the gangsters!
All power to the workers! Long live communism! Long live democracy!
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