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It’s been quite a week on the construction anti-corruption front:

• The Australian Senate passed new laws that will ensure that union and employer association bosses have similar obligations and liabilities to those of corporate directors.
• The Western Australian Treasurer wrote to the ACCC asking them investigate a CFMEU letter for possible breaches of competition laws.
• Grace Collier wrote in The Australian about the construction giant Lend Lease. The company paid $US56 million in a deal with the FBI to have criminal charges against it dropped after it confessed to corrupt practices in the New York construction sector.
• The Australian division of Lend Lease signed a workplace agreement with the CFMEU where it agreed (see clause 7.3) to terminate the agreement if it breaches proposed new government construction codes. Effectively, the CFMEU has quietly endorsed construction codes.
• The WA government also announced that it is introducing a construction code aimed to protect small business subbies from union/big contractor corrupt activity.

This all fits a pattern. What’s important to understand is that Australian construction unions aren’t in the business of protecting workers any more. ICA Executive Director Ken Phillips gave a talk at a recent conference where he said:

“These unions are now in fact self-sustaining non-taxable businesses that provide a service to (primarily) select large businesses in Australia. That service is the delivery of anti-competitive processes to protect their large business ‘partners’ from the businesses’ competitors.”

Ken explained this more fully in his presentation.

What we’re finally starting to see is Australian governments waking up to this creeping corruption and trying to do something about it. Corrupt, anti-competitive activities in construction particularly and directly harm small business subbies. They have to be protected.

You might also be interested (indeed, surprised) to learn that, in the ‘land of the free’ (USA), federal law effectively mandates compulsory unionism under certain circumstances. But some state and local governments fight against this. Just last week Kentucky’s Hardin County had its ‘freedom to join or not join a union’ laws secured in the United States Court of Appeals.

It just goes to show that the battle against corruption and for freedom is universal and must be ongoing.