AKP meeting calls for the creation of rank and file committees to fight the CFMEU administration

The Socialist Equality Party held a public meeting on Sunday calling on construction workers to form independent rank-and-file committees to fight the Labor government’s imposition of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Union (CFMEU) construction division administrator. ).

Dozens of young people and workers, including several CFMEU members, attended the meeting, which took place in Sydney and Melbourne. Participants from across the country and some from other countries including the US and New Zealand also took part via Zoom.

The event provided a comprehensive analysis of the CFMEU administration and made connections between this attack on construction workers and the crisis of capitalism in Australia and overseas.

Crucially, the meeting outlined key historical experiences of construction workers and other sections of the working class that contain key lessons for today. This experience was brought to life by working-class AKP members who recounted the party’s struggle for a socialist perspective at some of the key turning points in class struggle in Australia over the last forty years.

AKP member Luc Lopez, who chaired the meeting, explained that the administration had attacked the entire working class.

Putting the meeting in a broader context, Lopez noted that it comes a day after Israeli airstrikes on Iran, highlighting the urgent danger of regional and global war. He also stressed the need for workers to recognize the global nature of their struggle, highlighting in particular the recent uprising of American Boeing workers against a union-backed divestment agreement and the AKP(USA)’s fight to establish rank-and-file committees among this strategic section of workers.

The opening address was given by Michael Coggins, a member of the SEP National Committee who has been central to highlighting the struggles of Australian workers in the WSWS.

Coggins described in detail what the administration is, its purpose and the political challenges it poses to workers. He explained: “The lawyer chosen by the Labor government, Mark Irving CC, is now the effective dictator of the construction division. Any strike that CFMEU members want to undertake to fight for their jobs, pay and working conditions is now subject to the approval of a senior lawyer, who is answerable only to the state.

“It has the power to fire union officials, employees and workplace delegates, expel union members, determine when and under what circumstances elections can be held, and control the day-to-day activities of the union.”

Even in the context of Australia’s draconian industrial relations regime, this marked a new stage in the attack on workers’ rights. This had nothing to do with the completely unfounded media allegations linking the CFMEU to crime.

Providing a detailed timeline, Coggins established that the imposition of the administration was the result of a “conspiracy” between “the Labor government, police agencies, construction companies and the union bureaucracy” who “all conspired to carry out this attack on construction workers.” The goal, as increasingly stated in the financial press, is to reduce the wages and working conditions of construction workers.

The speaker explained that the CFMEU leadership itself contributed to this attack. It blocked any mobilization against plans to install an administration, focusing instead on behind-the-scenes negotiations and deals with government and industrial authorities.

The only concern of CFMEU officials was to try to maintain their privileged position within repressive industrial relations. According to Coggins, this was one manifestation of the transformation of the entire union bureaucracy into a completely corporate force designed to impose the dictates of governments and big business.

He outlined the AKP’s call for the creation of rank-and-file committees to fight the administration, contrasting them with the fake “rank and file” groups created by fake left-wing groups such as the Socialist Alliance. They acted as a front for the CFMEU leadership, uncritically repeating its statements and directing workers to lobby the Labor Party and the rest of the union bureaucracy.

On the other hand, the AKP fought for a “real grassroots movement.” Such a movement means a complete rebellion both against the overthrown CFMEU bureaucracy and against the CFMEU leaders who remain in the union, collaborating with the administrator.”

Through genuine rank-and-file committees that they control, workers can unite throughout the construction sector and more broadly to organize an industrial and political struggle to overthrow the administration. It was a political struggle against the Labor Party and all institutions of the capitalist state, raising the need for an alternative socialist perspective.

The second speaker, Morgan Peach, is a leading member of Youth and Students International for Social Equality, the youth and student wing of the AKP. Peach explained that the same Labor government that led the attack on the construction workers also supported Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. As part of this, the Labor Party led a wave of repression against protesters and university students who spoke out against war crimes.

According to Peach, the two issues are related. The turn to war did not only occur in the Gaza Strip. It included Labor’s support for the US and NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and Australia’s emergence as a frontline state in the disastrous war against China. This program could only be implemented through dictatorial measures.

Peach emphasized the need for students and youth to turn to the working class, a revolutionary force in society with social power, to end war, authoritarianism and their source, the capitalist system. This meant a political struggle against Labour, the trade union bureaucracy and the pseudo-left groups which, over the previous year, had subordinated opposition to the genocide to feckless appeals to the government.

The final report was presented by SEP National Secretary Cheryl Crisp. The attack on the construction workers, Crisp explained, came at a time when “humanity has again reached what can only be called an economic, social and political abyss, characterized by financial crisis, a turn to the extreme right, fascist forms of government and war.”

According to Crisp, the world was at war, reflected in Israeli strikes on Iran, the barbarity inflicted on the Palestinians, and the US-led offensive against Russia and China, all supported by the Labor government. The old nominally democratic forms of government were crumbling, most dramatically in this month’s US presidential election, which was fought between Donald Trump, a fascist gangster, and Kamala Harris, whose main policy is world war.

Reviewing the implementation of Labor Party administration and the CFMEU’s refusal to fight it, Crisp said: “The plan for this action was actually implemented almost 40 years ago, in 1986, when the Hawke/Keating Labor government deregistered the Building Workers’ Federation (BLF). forerunner of the CFMEU.”

This was a key element of the Accords implemented in the 1980s by the Labor government in conjunction with big business and the trade union bureaucracy. BLF leader Norm Gallagher was released from prison on contempt charges to attend and vote for the Agreement conferences, playing a central role in its passage. The Agreement’s program included the destruction of union leadership committees, the disciplining of workers and the destruction of entire sectors of industry that were considered insufficiently profitable, all in the interests of increasing the profits of Australian capitalism.

As the CFMEU leadership transitioned into control today, Gallagher then suppressed any fight against the deregistration of the BLF. Unions have always defended capitalism, but the 1980s marked a turning point. They “have become open policemen of the working class in the interests of capitalism. Backroom deals, agreements and conspiracies carried out behind the backs of their participants are aimed at preventing the working class from entering an independent political and socialist path.”

But it is precisely this perspective that is needed to stop the deepening barbarism, Crisp stressed, calling on workers to learn the lessons of history and join the AKP.

This path was specifically outlined in discussions between two long-time AKP members.

Ken Mantell spoke about his experience of fighting as a member of the Socialist Labor League, the predecessor of the AKP, against the deregistration of the BLF, of which he was a member. Mantell outlined the betrayal of various trade union leaders of the time, most of whom were associated with one wing of Stalinism or another. All of them defended capitalism and therefore sought to prevent any mobilization of workers against the radical attacks of the 1980s.

Mantell called a mass meeting, which he addressed despite attempts by the union bureaucracy to suppress him. An overwhelming majority of the more than 1,800 workers present voted in favor of a motion put forward by Mantell, calling for a working class movement against deregistration of the BLF and the Accords and setting out a revolutionary socialist program, including the nationalization of banks and large corporations. This, according to Mantell, refuted all those who argued that Australian workers were too backward to be won over to socialist views.

Warwick Dove, another working class member of the AKP National Committee, also spoke about his experiences in the steel industry, the struggle for socialist perspectives in the 1980s and since. The key lesson, he stressed, was that anger and determination are not enough. There was mass opposition to the agreement, but due to a lack of political understanding and still dominated by the trade union bureaucracy, the workers were unable to repel the onslaught.

Workers needed new struggle organizations to coordinate their struggles. But above all they needed a socialist and internationalist perspective, based on the scientific understanding that workers are fighting capitalism and all the political forces that defend it.