Unions gouge rivers of gold from workers’ savings

Despite their shrinking base covering fewer than one in 10 private sector workers, trade unions are laughing all the way to the bank — at the expense of their members. Institute of Public Affairs analysis, revealed on today’s front page, shows unions have pocketed $18.4 million in directors’ fees from industry superannuation funds across four years. It underlines the need for reform of the governance of superannuation funds as proposed in legislation before the Senate.

As Rachel Baxendale reports, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union grabbed the biggest jackpot, $2.8m, from 2013-14 to 2016-17. United Voice received $2.3m, the ACTU $2m, the Australian Workers Union, previously run by Bill Shorten, $1.7m and the Maritime Union of Australia $1m. Across the same period, employer or industry groups received a total of $2m in fees.

The IPA report is timely. Legislation to make Australia’s $2.3 trillion superannuation industry more accountable and transparent is scheduled for debate after the resolution of same-sex marriage legislation. For the sake of workers, it should be passed as soon as possible.

Among other reforms, the bill would ensure that at least one-third of super fund directors, including fund chairmen, are independent. The bill also would allow more than a million workers to choose their own funds if they could not do so at present under enterprise bargaining and workplace arrangements.

The opposition is expected to block provisions to ensure independent directors, which would protect the election war chests provided to Labor by affiliated unions. Crossbenchers, however, need to look beyond vested interests and put workers’ interests first. As Revenue and Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer wrote in The Australian recently: “We must remember the money held by super funds does not belong to the government or to the super industry. It is not the banks’ money, it is not the shareholders’ money, it is not the employers’ money and it is not the trade unions’ money.”

Unfortunately for the economy, the federal politicians’ citizenship fiasco and fumbling by Employment Minister Michaelia Cash and the Turnbull government over Australian Federal Police raids on AWU offices last month have delayed another vital piece of legislation. As Ewin Hannan reports, officials of Australia’s two most militant unions, the CFMEU and the Maritime Union of Australia, are pushing for a merger to be approved by the Fair Work Commission in January. The Australian Mines and Metals Association and the Australian Logistics Council fear, for good reason, that a new 144,000-member super union would ramp up industrial action across the supply chain, from pit to port, driving up freight costs and prices for consumers. But Senator Cash is unable to say when the Coalition’s ­promised bill to subject union mergers to a public-interest test will be brought before the Senate. Given the record of both unions in shrugging off millions of dollars in fines for breaking the law, the government’s inertia over the legislation will undermine productivity and jobs. As former Labor minister and ex-ACTU president Martin Ferguson warned earlier this year, the merger was “just about politics and industrial power”.