ACTU’s Sally McManus says blue-collar worker focus narrow, old fashioned

Sally McManus cautions Labor against lowering its climate change ambition, while criticising Joel Fitzgibbon.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus. Picture: AAP

ACTU secretary Sally McManus has warned Labor against lowering its ambition on climate change action, declaring Joel Fitzgibbon’s focus on blue-collar workers was “narrow” and “old fashioned”.

Ms McManus said climate change would impact all workers as she pushed back against the Hunter MP’s call for the party to take a more pragmatic approach on the issue to win back voters in the regions.

“Climate change is not an issue that affects just one group of workers. It does impact on people more or less, but when there is a bushfire and it surrounds your whole city and everyone is choking on the toxicity of that, which happened around this time last year in Sydney, it affects everyone,” Ms McManus told the National Press Club in Canberra.

“In many different ways, a whole lot of industries like our tourism industry and others, are going to be affected by climate change.

“So whenever we narrow our thinking and we have some idea, old-fashioned idea

actually, of blue-collar workers, we are really narrowing who we are talking about because climate change affects everyone.”

Ms McManus said Labor could appeal to both inner-city and regional voters by focusing on industrial relations issues, particularly job security.

“Everyone is affected by this issue of insecure work. So whether we talk about — and I am not typecasting — academics in the inner-city or whether we talk about miners in Mackay they are both impacted by this particular problem,” Ms McManus said.

“I would even say that (there are) a whole lot of workers in the Hunter in those mining companies who face that problem of labour hire, which has come and just undercut their job security and their lives.

“It is a huge issue and it is a huge uniting issue across all workers.”

Mr Fitzgibbon supports Labor’s net-zero emissions by 2050 target but is pushing the party to adopt medium-term targets closer to the Coalition’s and be firm in its support for coal and gas.

The veteran MP’s push is backed by the CFMEU and the Australian Workers Union but is opposed by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

With the Morrison government to table an industrial relations omnibus bill in parliament next week, Ms McManus said unions would resist any attempt by the Coalition to reduce workers’ rights.

The Australian has reported the government was proposing to allow the same wage and conditions to be set for the construction life of new major projects worth more than $500m. It would also be permitted for projects of lesser value if they were deemed to be of national significance and would create jobs.

Ms McManus said the union would consider backing longer agreements for large greenfields projects “so long as you make sure there are protections and fairness in there”.

“We were prepared to find ways to accommodate what was being said to us, so long as we address the problems we know are associated with basically locking workers out of having a voice for that period of time,” she said.

She also accused some employer groups of wanting to use the COVID-19 pandemic to “dust off Work Choices”.

“It wasn’t like it was new to us. We has heard it all before. We knew it was a different moment,” she said.