Union leader Michael O’Connor warns Anthony Albanese faces voter backlash over timber workers
Anthony Albanese faces a voter backlash over Daniel Andrews’ ‘disgraceful’ treatment of timber workers, a union leader says.
Veteran national union leader Michael O’Connor has warned that Anthony Albanese and the federal ALP face a blue-collar voter backlash at the federal election over the Andrews Labor government’s “disgraceful” treatment of timber workers.
Mr O’Connor, the national secretary of the CFMEU’s manufacturing division and ALP national executive member, said Scott Morrison and federal Labor’s opponents would use Victoria’s “sick joke” of a transition package for timber workers as a live example of why Labor nationally could not be trusted to properly assist workers in exposed industries.
He said timber workers who were being made redundant as a result of Victoria shutting down the native forest industry by 2030 were being “thrown on the scrap heap”, and the state government’s “poverty plan for timber workers” would undermine any promise by federal Labor to provide a “just transition” for workers and communities affected by its emission policies.
“The reality facing federal Labor is that actions speak louder than words. Voters will look to this example of a Labor government transitioning an industry and see that it will destroy livelihoods and communities in (Victoria’s) Latrobe Valley,” Mr O’Connor said. “This will send a shiver down the spine of blue-collar workers and communities all around Australia.”
Given Covid restrictions were lifting, he said the CFMEU’s manufacturing division would be aggressively campaigning against the policy in the lead-up to the Victorian election in November 2022, ensuring the public attacks would occur ahead of the federal election.
If the policy was not dropped, the union would push for the state government to quadruple the maximum amount it intends to compensate workers on top of their redundancy packages – from a cap of just $23,000 to $100,000 per worker.
“It’s going to get red hot,” Mr O’Connor said.
“What it means for federal Labor is, here is a real life example of how Labor deals with just transition, and it’s not good. Andrews is really undermining the efforts of federal Labor to gain the confidence of workers.
“If I was a coalminer, a power generation worker, a manufacturing worker and wanted to look at the bona fides of the ALP, the Labor Party, about how they deal with just transition, if you looked at what happened to the Victorian timber workers you would be really worried,” he said.
“Federal Labor’s pitch to blue-collar voters in regional Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia and around the country would be greatly assisted by the Victorian government rethinking its forestry plan, and building dignity and proper support for workers and their communities into it.
“Without this rethink in Victoria, the constituents that Labor needs on its side will not trust them and not vote for them.”
Mr O’Connor, the brother of federal Labor frontbencher Brendan O’Connor, resigned as the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union national secretary in 2020 following a campaign by construction and maritime division officials, including Victorian secretary John Setka, to force him out.
Mr O’Connor was one of the organisers of the blockade of Parliament House in 1995 when 4000 timber workers protested Labor’s decision to impose limitations on logging. Nine years later, he backed John Howard in the 2004 election after Mark Latham wanted to lock up native forests.
Asked on Wednesday if the current stoush had any parallels with 2004, Mr O’Connor said: “I think it’s not as dramatic at this stage, and it depends on whether other political parties use what’s going on.”
Writing in The Australian, Mr O’Connor said Just Transition was a globally accepted blueprint for securing workers’ rights and livelihoods and assisting communities as economies transitioned to more sustainable industries.
But he said the Victorian plan would see a worker made redundant after 30 years in the industry receive a maximum of $23,000 compensation in the form of a top-up payment.
Mr O’Connor said the “insulting and inadequate” proposal was less than a quarter of the Tasmanian and commonwealth government’s transition support payment to timber workers when the Tasmanian industry was restructured in 2013, and eligible workers received up to $100,000 from the government.
He said the level of compensation was also far inferior to that from the Bracks and Brumby governments in their Our Forest, Our Future timber industry restructure in Victoria nearly 20 years ago. Mr O’Connor said the cap should be increased to $100,000.
“Instead of a Just Transition, the Victorian government’s Victorian Forestry Plan has alienated a community in a region already battered by power station closures, and devastated by the combined effects of bushfire and the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
“The message received by these workers, their families and communities is this: Labor is not on their side.”
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