Unions in conflict footing not seen in decades, Scott Morrison warns

Scott Morrison says the union movement’s plan for mass strikes in the lead-up the election marks a return to industrial unrest.

Scott Morrison addresses the media in Perth today. Picture: AAP

Scott Morrison says the union movement is on “a conflict footing” he has not seen in decades, as the ACTU prepares to lead mass anti-Coalition strikes in the lead up to election day.

More than 250,000 workers expected to walk off the job on April 10 and ACTU secretary Sally McManus has insisted the protests are political, and not designed to impact on employers whose businesses will be affected by the mass walkouts.

Mr Morrison said Ms McManus is taking advantage of Bill Shorten, and linked her planned mass protests with former prime minister Bob Hawke’s relative control of the union movement during the 1980s.

“She is now taking Australia to a conflict footing that we have not seen in this country for decades, for absolute decades.”

“I don’t think you make Australia stronger by the type of militant conflict-based approaches of a union movement that has been emboldened by the weakness of Bill Shorten.

“Bob Hawke controlled the unions but the unions will run Bill Shorten.

“They’re marking out their ground, rolling up their sleeves, with their shouts, slogans ready to go and they’ll be marking it out for a period of industrial conflict in this country.”

Australian Building and Construction Commissioner Stephen McBurney has told The Australian the agency would seek to have a $5000 fine imposed on individual construction workers if they were found to have taken unlawful ­industrial action by stopping work to attend a rally without ­advance written permission of their ­employer.

The Federal Court imposed $1400 fines on individual workers who attended a Perth rally and took unlawful industrial action for one day.

ACTU president Michele O’Neil last night slammed the ABCC threat and accused the agency of behaving like a “shadowy taxpayer-funded organisation to threaten and pursue individuals who exercise their right to political protest”.