6 Reasons Why the ABCC Must Go in 2011
The not-guilty verdict against construction worker Ark Tribe demonstrates that the ABCC has been acting illegally – in breach of its own laws.
"I didn't set out to test these laws. I'm just an ordinary bloke who went to work one day on a construction site in Adelaide.
The last two years have been shocking, it's been a nightmare, I'm glad it's over. We gottem…you can't do this to us." Ark Tribe Rigger
The ABCC has around 29 civil proceedings in court against construction workers and their union.
"The way we're being treated out there compared to other industries is just not fair, what they are doing is actually prosecuting the people who are building the houses for our people, the office blocks for our industries." Rohan Tobler Carpenter
The ABCC has special coercive powers that have been enshrined in law. The Government has the power to abolish the ABCC and the laws which underpin it.
"It has powers that not even police agencies have. It has the ability to force people to give evidence against themselves, to give evidence against their families, to give evidence against their workers." Prof. George Williams Constitutional Law Expert UNSW
In 2010 the ABCC fined one employer $12,000 for denying union access to a construction site for a safety check. In an industry where a worker dies on average each week this is a slap on the wrist
"I've definitely never heard of them sticking up for an employee, I've heard them prosecute employees, threatening to take their houses away by fining them, prosecuting their unions." Rohan Tobler Carpenter
The ABCC wasted a million taxpayer dollars in its failed attempt to prosecute Ark Tribe for not attending a secret interrogation. Each year the ABCC costs us $30 million to run.
"I find it obscene that tax payers money is being used to finance a department that persecutes tax payers for fighting for their democratic rights." Brett Walker Electrician
In 2010 the UN slammed the building and construction laws for the seventh time for undermining workers' rights to participate in collective action and to be represented by their union.
"The International Labor Organisation has been very clear that the Australian Building and Construction Commission does not comply with Aus international obligations. It has powers that cannot be justified and it has powers that are not appropriate in a fair and democratic nation." Prof. George Williams Constitutional Law Expert UNSW.
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