Rights on Site

Rights on Site is a campaign for the 900,000 construction workers across Australia who do not have the same rights in their workplace as all other Australian workers.

About the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner
The Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner (ABCC) was created by the Howard Government in 2005 to undermine construction workers' rights and restrict the role of unions.

Its predecessor, the Building Industry Taskforce, was set up in the wake of the politically-driven Cole Royal Commission into the building and construction industry earlier in the decade.

While its brief is to oversee adherence to industrial law, the ABCC conspicuously fails to investigate or prosecute employers underpaying workers or breaching safety regulations.

Rather, it targets individual workers involved in union or collective activity not strictly related to EBA negotiations.

Even if a worker is killed on site, his colleagues must be able to prove they had a reasonable concern about an imminent risk to themselves to legally stop work and assess the safety situation.

Passers-by can also be interrogated by the ABCC for witnessing activities on a building site.

The ABCC has the power to seek fines against individual workers of up to $22,000 and to gag interviewees. Anyone who refuses to cooperate fully faces a potential 6 month jail term.

More than 92 construction workers have been secretly interrogated by the ABCC.

The Rudd government was elected in 2007 with a mandate to abolish the ABCC on 31 January 2010, and to transfer responsibility for compliance in the construction industry to a specialist division within the Fair Work inspectorate.

The 2009 ALP Conference restated Labor’s commitment to abolish the ABCC by 1 February 2010.

Despite a clear mandate, the legislation to abolish the ABCC faces obstruction in the Senate.

Ark Tribe
Ark Tribe is a construction worker from South Australia who faced six months in jail simply for not not attending an interview with the ABCC.

Ark was working on the Flinders University site in Adelaide. Conditions were so bad that workers drew up a petition calling for safety improvements, on a handtowel.

It took an intervention by the union and the state government safety regulator to get the most pressing problems fixed and finally, after several days, things began to get back on track.

One by one workers from the site were called before the ABCC. Ark refused to do so.

In Ark's words: “If I've done something wrong, I'm prepared to cop it, but I won't be treated unfairly.”

We need to get the Labor Government to get rid of these laws, before another construction worker faces jail.

What needs to happen
The Labor Government must deliver on its election campaign promise to abolish the ABCC and the coercive powers which discriminate against building and construction workers.

It should use all legislative and non-legislative tools available to keep to this commitment.

The Senate must stop blocking this important piece of legislation which would abolish the ABCC.