Friends and Enemies

The Labor government’s move against the CFMEU is motivated by three converging interests. Albanese hopes that it will bolster the developers that state and federal Labor governments rely on to build housing and infrastructure. It also suits his factional interests in the ALP, and, most immediately, it’s an attempt to neutralize a perceived political threat.

A combination of lackluster polling for state and federal Labor governments and an approaching federal election — likely to be held next year — have made Labor anxious to build a political firewall against Coalition claims that Labor is in bed with “CFMEU thugs.” Indeed, in a recent press conference, Albanese laid out a narrative contrasting the “effective action” taken by Labor against the Coalition’s supposed failure to rein in Victorian and Tasmanian branch secretary John Setka, who resigned last month. The prime minister also played up the fact that construction bosses at the Master Builders Association (MBA) have “welcomed” the government’s plan.

And why wouldn’t the MBA support the government’s crackdown on the CFMEU? The union’s defiant use of unlawful wildcat strikes and pattern bargaining, combined with its willingness to maintain closed shops, are why construction wages have bucked the trend of falling real wages across Australia. Indeed, CFMEU leaders have recently clinched a 22 percent pay rise, a national ban on deadly manufactured stone, and criminal penalties for bosses that kill workers.

If Albanese’s move is successful, state-appointed administrators will crack down on these militant strategies, which are illegal according to Australia’s draconian industrial relations system, shifting the power balance toward developers in the industry.

Developers are also backing Labor’s plan to dismantle the union from within because they hope it will succeed where previous attempts have not. For years, Coalition governments have tried and failed to curb the union’s power from without. Indeed, the CFMEU saw off Building and Construction Commissioner (ABCC) fines totaling $16 million by rallying members and drawing on solidarity from other unions. Labor’s attack, however, has seen most unions, as well as the peak union body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), turn against the CFMEU. Developers are hoping that this will blunt the CFMEU’s ability to defend itself.

Impossible Promises

As likely as it sounds, none of this should be taken to suggest an explicit conspiracy between the ALP and big developers. After all, there’s no need for a conspiracy when their interests are so closely aligned. The government depends entirely on private developers to deliver state-funded housing and transport projects, and in return, private developers earn handsome, publicly funded profits. And given the construction industry generates 7.1 percent of Australia’s GDP, the simple fact is that developers and governments have a shared interest in cutting labor costs.

This is convergence of interests is in part the result of a few decades of bipartisan neoliberal reforms. A familiar blend of deregulation, investor tax breaks, and privatization have increased both major parties’ dependence on private builders. By contrast, when postwar governments needed to build millions of low-cost homes they turned to public builders. Now, both parties rely on multinational companies who are also their biggest political donors. Aside from creating an intractable housing affordability crisis, this system has scarred Australian skylines with soulless, empty, and collapsing high-rise buildings.

Attacking the construction union is also part of Labor’s implausible plan to simultaneously deliver budget repair, tax cuts, and government services. If construction overheads can be mitigated with a combination of financial subsidies, watered-down planning laws, and by clamping down on the CFMEU, Labor reasons, private developers will deliver construction projects in a timely and cost-effective way. In their eyes, it’s a win-win, potentially saving the government (and private developers) millions while following through on Albanese’s promises to build houses and ease the cost-of-living crisis. Of course, all of this presupposes that developers will pass on to governments savings made as a result of wage cuts.

This is also why state Labor governments have been quick to seize the opportunity to further their own interests. In Victoria, Labor premier Jacinta Allan is trying to tear up CFMEU negotiated enterprise agreements that govern the state government’s $100 billion “big-build” infrastructure pipeline. New South Wales (NSW) Labor premier Chris Minns is hoping to follow suit, calling for a review of CFMEU negotiated pay and conditions across the board. Other states are likely to jump on the bandwagon.

Factional Warlords

Behind Labor’s political and financial aspirations is another, more opaque motivation: Albanese wants to settle factional scores in Labor and clamp down on left-wing internal dissent.

Prior to Labor cutting ties with the union, the CFMEU and its factional allies consistently opposed Labor’s right-wing policies at state and federal party conferences. It wasn’t just a public relations nightmare. It also exposed how Labor’s “Hard Left” faction — the misleadingly named grouping that Albanese has used for the last thirty years to take control of the party — has dragged the ALP to the right, despite its supposedly socialist origins.

In alliance with Labor Right, Albanese’s Hard Left rose to power by bureaucratically marginalizing the rival “Soft Left” faction, which opposed the ALP’s embrace of neoliberalism. In NSW, the CFMEU supported the Soft Left in its opposition to Labor’s income tax cuts, the AUKUS (Australia, the UK, and the United States) nuclear submarine program, and draconian anti-protest laws.

The CFMEU also earned the ire of NSW Labor premier Minns for publicly criticizing his woeful position on Gaza and the attempts by Hard Left–aligned police minister Yasmin Catley to criminalize pro-Palestine protests. And this was not exceptional — the CFMEU has strongly backed the Palestine protest movement elsewhere. It has also defended public housing tenants and rebel Labor MPs sacked for upholding the right to protest.

This conflict between genuine Labor progressives in the Soft Left and Albanese’s Hard Left came to a head in 2022, in the leadup to the NSW Labor conference. Albanese-aligned leaders of the NSW Labor Left (of which both the Hard and Soft Left are sub-factions) disenfranchised CFMEU delegates in a bid to prevent the union’s preferred upper-house candidate being preselected. Ultimately, the maneuver failed when dissident left delegates backed a successful breakaway ticket to elect Cameron Murphy, a long-standing critic of the NSW Hard Left’s alliance with the NSW right.

Meanwhile, in Victoria, the CFMEU-aligned Industrial Left (IL) faction has been a persistent thorn in the side of Albanese’s close allies in the Victorian Socialist Left faction. Since splitting from the Socialist Left in 2017, the IL has fought for militant unionism and the careers of its leaders. It has both marshalled delegates from the Victorian CFMEU and the Rail, Tram, and Bus Union to pursue more militant industrial policies at Labor conferences while serving as a vehicle for the personal ambition of its leaders, particularly Setka­­, who resigned from the ALP in 2019 when it became clear that a move by Albanese to expel him from the party would succeed.

This is why, in the IL’s short and turbulent history, its two most consistent themes have been hostility toward the Socialist Left faction and Albanese personally. Indeed, despite having advocated for left-wing militancy, the IL has also been happy at times to team up with the Labor’s right faction to oppose its former comrades in the left faction. Today the breakaway group is the only thing standing between the Victorian Socialist Left and total command of Labor Left–aligned unions, branches, and MPs.

In short, defanging the CFMEU is about completely subjecting Labor to the hegemony of Albanese’s Hard Left and its allies in the Labor Right by clamping down on internal, progressive dissent. It will diminish both the Soft Left and IL as poles of opposition to Albanese’s neoliberal government.

Naturally, this suits the National Right faction, which is happy to see the back of a militant left-wing union. And in addition to pushing the party further away from anything resembling social democracy, it may also give the right-aligned Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) an opportunity to poach members from their beleaguered industrial competitor. Just last week, this convergence of interests saw the ALP National Executive — dominated by the Hard Left–Labor Right alliance — pass Hard Left–aligned senator Tim Ayres’s motion to sever all ties with the CFMEU.

Conveniently, this move also meant that CFMEU delegates were barred from attending the NSW Labor conference, held just days after the National Executive decision. In response, Electrical Trades Union (ETU) delegates disrupted Albanese’s conference speech with shouts of “shame” before walking out.

In a speech to the conference, ETU national secretary Allen Hicks questioned why the prime minister was attacking the CFMEU given the government’s light touch approach to corporate wrongdoing at Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank, and Westpac. As Hicks said:

Time and time again we see in this place, corporations have their day in court, corporations go through a process, corporations get fined. But when a trade union is under attack for allegations, rather than getting around them and supporting them and helping them work through a process to address any anomalies that they may have, we attack them — and I say shame.

A senior member of Labor’s Friends of Palestine group endorsed Hicks’s remarks, lamenting that “[Labor Friends of Palestine’s] capacity to prosecute our case against the genocide in Gaza was greatly diminished by the loss of the CFMEU delegation.”

The Last Battle?

It remains to be seen whether Albanese and his Labor Right–aligned industrial relations minister, Tony Burke, will succeed in their bid to crush the union. It would be naive to dismiss battle-hardened construction workers, who have already seen off the ABCC, relentless media attacks, and the Heydon Royal Commission. To win, the government will need to see off internal pressure from CFMEU-aligned MPs, unions, and branch members. It will also face a potentially grueling court challenge from the union’s National Executive.

Minister Burke has threatened to use legislation to bypass these impediments. However, to pass any such laws, Labor will require the support of either Greens or Coalition Senators. For the Greens, this means a choice between defending union rights — and weathering a media onslaught — or backing a neoliberal intervention against the nation’s most militant and successful union.

Alternatively, if the Greens won’t play ball, the ALP could turn to the Coalition for support. This, however, poses its own set of challenges. Not least of these is the fact that Opposition leader Peter Dutton will want to drag the issue out as long as possible, to exacerbate Labor’s polling woes or to land blows against other unions. In this scenario, Albanese will find himself wedged between the hard-line intervention he has promised and unreasonable Coalition amendments. Whatever the case, these uncertainties suggest that the CFMEU saga will drag on for several months.

None of this is to suggest that there aren’t genuine left-wing criticisms of the CFMEU. But a genuinely pro-union government would deal with these by empowering rank-and-file union members to determine the direction of their own union. As a key internal opponent of the construction union leadership told 60 Minutes, “We don’t need outside bodies to police us, we’re quite capable of doing it ourselves.”

Ultimately, the ALP’s assault on CFMEU members’ rights points to the party’s hostility toward basic trade union principles. It should go without saying that the merits (or otherwise) of some CFMEU officials should not be taken to undermine the collective dignity of construction workers or the solidarity of the union movement as a whole.

Trade unionists should have the courage to call out the ALP’s intervention for what it is: a ham-fisted attempt to shift the burden of its electoral, budgetary, and factional interests onto tens of thousands of construction workers.