Morrison will pay for workers’ fines

The Coalition has walked straight into the trap sprung for it by the union movement.

Imagine just before this year’s election when the advertisements start running on television and social media. In a humble-looking kitchen, there will be an ordinary-looking family seated around their table. “I took a day off work to march in a rally,” a man in a fluoro shirt will say to the camera, “and my boss didn’t have a problem with it at all, but for that crime, and it is a crime under the current law, Scott Morrison is suing me, taking me to court. If he wins, and I think he will, I could be fined 42 grand.”

Cue the wife — “We can’t afford to fight the government in the Federal Court — we are going to lose our house,” she will say before bursting into tears. Then two scared-looking children will start crying and lean into their mother’s embrace. The shot will recede as the family sobs, huddled together, heads bowed and shoulders heaving.

A voiceover will then say that the government is suing individual workers for the crime of taking a day off work to march and stand up for what is right.

Across the screen a message will flash about how unjust laws need to be broken, and to change the rules, Morrison needs to be voted out.

The campaign will make the infamous Work Choices advertisements look positively tame — and, unfortunately, the government has only itself to blame. It has foolishly walked right into the union movement’s trap and virtually written the script for these advertisements, because every word of it is arguably true.

Last year the union movement held a series of rallies around the country to protest against the Fair Work Act, the Coalition and the lot of working people in general. Many thousands of people attended.

Some of these folk walked off the job to attend their local march in an act that is legally defined as “unlawful industrial action”. Workers in Australia are allowed to take industrial action but there is a process that must be followed first, and this process takes at least several weeks. For industrial action to be defined as lawful, it can occur only in the enterprise bargaining context, after a Fair Work Commission-approved ballot is conducted and won, and a written notice is served on the employer.

The union movement doesn’t like this process. It says there is too much red tape around it and people should be able to withdraw their labour as a human right. It wants to “change the rules” so that people can strike more readily, and this is part of what the marches agitated for.

After the rallies, 34 building companies made complaints to the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the building industry regulator. No one knows if building company Lendlease made a complaint but this week we learned that about 150 Lendlease workers in Sydney are likely to be prosecuted for taking a day off to march.

The company handed over the names and addresses of the workers to the ABCC after a “notice to produce” was issued, a legal document that compels the company to comply.

You may have little sympathy for the striking workers but many will, and the advertisements are going to frighten many, too.

Further, the key to this issue is the following fact: any employer can sack, instantly and without any legal recourse or risk of unfair dismissal, any employee who takes unlawful industrial action. So any company that employs any worker who walks off the job without permission can sack that worker and there is absolutely nothing the worker can do about it.

However, as a rule, companies don’t take the option available to them. Instead, they do nothing to the workers and make a report to the ABCC. Then the government, at great expense, punishes their staff for them. This is, in my opinion, a gross waste of taxpayer funds. The public has no interest in disciplining recalcitrant employees. This is the job of the employer, and if the employer is too feeble to take the legal recourse available, then it shouldn’t look to the taxpayer for help. Further, the government shouldn’t help employers who won’t help themselves.

A common mistake people make is to think that industrial relations is about the law and what happens in court. It is not. Instead, industrial relations practice is the art of politics in the workplace, and sometimes the wider community. There is what is legal and there is what one can get away with. A win is not always a win, if you get my drift.

In my opinion, way back when they scheduled the rallies, leaders in the union movement would have hoped that some attendees would be prosecuted. They would have envisaged how they could publicise the cases and how this would help them win the election for Labor.

Yet again, working people are pawns in the great war between unions and the Coalition. The government has walked straight into the trap sprung for it. Instead of putting the employers’ nose to the grindstone, it takes action against the workers.

Morrison needs to look ahead and follow the bouncing ball to where it will land. Fining individuals for skiving off for a day? Really? Is this the job of government? For Morrison, this is one of those instances where even when he wins, he loses.