Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a matter of public interest concerning the brutal murder of trade unionists and the continued violation of trade unionists’ rights in developing countries around the world. There have been attacks on workers’ rights in this country, but those attacks on workers’ rights were not of the type that are mounted against workers in developing countries.

In November 2007 in this country a message was sent by the Australian community to the coalition that rights at work were important for working people, and the community rejected Work Choices and all of the baggage that Work Choices brought to bear on ordinary Australians, such as 3½ million workers denied any unfair dismissal rights under Work Choices and no effective independent umpire to provide any fairness and equity in the workplace. Millions of Australians had real pay cuts of $97.75 a week when the minimum wage was cut. Hundreds of thousands of workers were pushed onto individual contracts where 70 per cent lost shift loadings, 68 per cent lost their annual leave loadings, 65 per cent lost their penalty rates, 49 per cent lost their overtime loadings and 25 per cent no longer had public holidays. We know that the coalition want to go back to Work Choices. They want to go back to a situation where workers’ rights are stripped away once again in this country.

But the challenges that trade unions and workers in this country faced under the coalition government pale into insignificance against the challenges that some workers and trade unionists face around the world. On 24 June 2009 I spoke in this chamber about the murder of trade unionists and the violation of the human rights of trade unionists in Colombia. The basis of my remarks on that occasion was the 2009 International Trade Union Confederation report on violations of trade union rights around the world. The ITUC’s 2010 report has just been released. This shows that at least 101 trade unionists were killed in 2009, compared to 76 the previous year. So it is getting tougher for trade unionists around the world—and it would get tougher for trade unionists in this country if Tony Abbott were ever to get back into power. Forty-eight unionists were killed in Colombia, 16 in Guatemala, 12 in Honduras, six in Mexico, six in Bangladesh, four in Brazil, three in the Dominican Republic and three in the Philippines. These are real people with real lives and real families who were murdered because they stood up for trade unionism.

Unfortunately, Colombia remains the most dangerous place in the world to be an active trade unionist. The historical and structural violence against the Colombian trade union movement remains firmly in place, manifesting itself in the form of systematic human and trade union rights violations. On average over the past 23 years, men and women trade unionists in Colombia have been killed at a rate of one every three days. In 2009, 48 trade unionists, including five women and 22 trade union leaders, were killed. Heading the list of those who perpetrate these murders are the paramilitary and guerrilla groups operating in Colombia. In addition to these murders in Colombia, there were at least 500 attacks on Colombian trade unionists, including 11 attempted murders and three disappearances. Measures by the Colombian state have proved ineffective and insufficient, and the murders, disappearances and threats are continuing. The efforts to investigate these crimes are incomplete and the cases reported by trade union organisations are not always taken into account. The law continues to place a range of limitations on trade union rights, despite the recent improvements in labour legislation.

Colombia is not the only country where violation of workers and trade union rights occur. In Mozambique, trade unions are rarely accepted at the workplace. Activists are harassed and collective agreements are constantly violated. Public servants still do not have the right to organise, and the right to strike is restricted. Employers have continued to show their hostility towards workers’ representatives. Anti-union discrimination remains a problem, as the 2007 labour code does not sufficiently protect workers. Legal constraints on private gatherings and workers meetings at the workplace are very strict.

In Cameroon, trade union activism is repressed, notably at Cameroon railways and the port of Douala, with several cases of unfair dismissals and transfers taking place. Organisations considered too demanding or too independent are discriminated against. There are too few collective agreements and those that exist are not fully applied. Workers face prison sentences if they disregard the procedures for union registration. In Ghana, workers were recently arrested and several were wounded by rubber bullets when they were forcibly removed from their steel plant for starting a strike. The labour legislation does not sufficiently secure trade union rights and the authorities retain discretionary powers over unions.

In Guinea, trade union activities were banned by the ruling junta until 28 February this year. After the massacre of up to 200 civilians by the army on 28 September during protests against the junta, the trade unions, like the rest of the population, witnessed a further cycle of violence. On 28 February, the National Council for Democracy and Development lifted the ban that had prevented all trade union and political activity since the coup d’etat on 23 December 2008. Three days later, troops under the command of the Secretary of State for the Fight against Drugs raided the home of the general secretary of the National Workers Confederation of Guinea. This trade union leader, who has often been harassed and threatened with death, described it as another act of intimidation.

In Tanzania, there was good news and bad news. Teachers were caned for asking for a pay rise, while at the docks and on the railways employers tried to ignore unions. In the catering industry, however, the government urged employers to allow union representation, while a court upheld the unfair dismissal claim of the mineworkers union made on behalf of 700 members. Overall, the legal environment is not conducive to trade unions, especially in Zanzibar, where all strikes are prohibited. Remember: these are areas where our mining companies operate and never raise a voice against these issues.

In Brazil, trade union activists and leaders met with extreme and repeated violence in 2009. Precarious contracts continue to be the norm and are used as a means of flouting trade union and labour rights. Trade union pluralism is restricted and the authorities have the right to reject collective agreements. Rural trade union leader Raimundo Nonato was murdered, fishing union leader Paulo Santos Souza was murdered, trade union leader Josenaldo Alves da Silva was murdered, rural workers rights activist Elton Brum da Silva was murdered and there was a murder attempt on agrarian sector trade union leader Elio Neves.

In the Dominican Republic, restrictive labour laws coupled with poor enforcement make organising difficult. Even though the law prohibits dismissals of trade union members and their leaders for trade union activities, it is generally not applied and the penalties are not sufficiently dissuasive to prevent employers from violating workers’ rights. Dismissals of the founding members of a union that is denied registration by the administrative authorities are not unheard of. Due to the requirement that a union must represent an absolute majority of workers in a company in order to bargain collectively, only a minority of companies have a collective bargaining agreement.

In the EPZs, only a handful of companies have negotiated collective agreements. Most of the workers on the republic’s sugar plantations are undocumented Haitians. They do not have the right to form unions or to bargain collectively. Employers prefer to hire them as a means of evading the law and paying lower wages. Workers at Gildan, a clothing company headquartered in Canada, attempted to form a union but were met with reprisals by the company. After formally presenting all the paperwork required to register the union to the Dominican Republic Ministry of Labour, the company responded by laying off workers and coercing them not to join the union.

Against a backdrop of a high-level ILO mission to the Philippines to investigate allegations of the murder and abduction of trade unionists, the killing, kidnapping and disappearances continued. Three trade union officials were shot and killed by unknown assassins and one died after being interrogated by state security forces. Three other members were abducted and one former trade union leader was arrested and charged with murder. Army personnel also harass and intimidate striking workers.

Apart from the egregious violations of workers’ human and trade union rights that occur in these countries, they have something else in common: they are host to the operations of some of the biggest mining companies in the world that here in Australia are claiming in hysterical terms that reform of the way in which the extraction of our finite resources is taxed makes Australia the biggest source of sovereign risk they face anywhere in the world.

BHP Billiton mines coal and nickel in Colombia as well as bauxite in Mozambique, Suriname and Brazil. Rio Tinto mines bauxite in Brazil, Cameroon, Ghana and Guinea. Xstrata mines coal in Colombia, copper in the Philippines and nickel in Tanzania and the Dominican Republic. While these mining companies are able to raise a cacophony of confected outrage at the government’s proposal for a decent and fair resource rent tax, their silence over outrageous violations of human rights in other countries in which they operate is deafening.

In fact, statements such as those by the American boss of Rio Tinto, Tom Albanese, about Australia representing the biggest sovereign risk faced by his company are wrong. Rio Tinto’s assertions on sovereign risk pale into insignificance when compared to the risks that unionists face in countries where he does business on a daily basis. Where are Rio Tinto’s, BHP’s and Xtrata’s voices on the risks facing workers who exercise their international rights to collectively bargain and form a union in Colombia, Mozambique, Brazil, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic?

What Mr Albanese, Clive Palmer and BHP Billiton executives reveal is that these companies are too accustomed to behaving like the sovereign power in the countries in which they operate. They are far too well accustomed to operating like the Dutch East India Company of centuries past. While they may be able to bully and cajole the governments of developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas into dancing to their tune, they will not succeed here in Australia. We will not capitulate to their unfair demand to get superprofits in their back pockets and not in the pockets of the people who deserve them—that is, the Australian public. We will not go back to Work Choices in this country because the coalition will do whatever these big mining companies want. We will not go back to a position where we give up on decent rights in this country. (Time expired)