Page 715 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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All women today, for example, enjoy the fruits of the suffragette and subsequent women's liberation movements, but they are not forced into joining organisations that support their principles today. They do so voluntarily. The unions could perhaps learn from the women's movement and continue to educate and encourage rather than to force and condemn.
The questions many union reps should ask of themselves - and incidentally, this was raised by a member of a particular union here - are: "How can we make our union an organisation worth joining?. What can we offer each member in return for joining our union?". There are many accounts of workers being forced to pay union dues before they are allowed to work, with absolutely nothing offered in return. Madam Speaker, I am going to give a couple of examples. The first example is this: A young casual worker covered by the Storemen and Packers Union was told that she had to pay up front $180, which was more than a week's pay, in case she was retrenched before the union could collect a full year's dues. She was told, "No union, no job".
I do not intend to give incident after incident of what I consider bully tactics and thuggery by some union reps, as this amendment is not attempting to address industrial relations but human rights; but they do exist, Madam Speaker, and I have heard of quite a few of them over the last few days. The main employers of young people in the ACT include people like Woolworths, Coles and other supermarkets. It appears that the unions concerned there have made, effectively, enterprise agreements with the employers of those organisations. The agreements amount to no choice; no job if you do not join the union, even as a casual. The same union demanding fees and membership could not offer any support to the casual worker when threatened with the loss of the job or the conditions under which he or she was employed.
Why do unions believe that they have the right to deny people their democratic right to choose? As a teacher, Madam Speaker, I watched a young maths teacher complete her first year of training and her first year of teaching. To get off probation, to be able to become a permanent member of the work force, this person, whom I considered to be a particularly competent teacher, had to go through a process of peer assessment. She objected to joining the union on principle. As I recall, she was a member of a political party - I do not remember whether it was Liberals or Democrats - and did not want her funds to go to the Labor Party via the union. That was her reason for not wanting to join the union. Her immediate peers who were entitled to carry out the peer assessment refused to do so until she joined the union. Madam Speaker, I am sure that you are conscious of these things. She refused and our children lost her services to this society. We lost the services of a particularly competent mathematics teacher.
Mr Lamont: The Teachers Federation is not affiliated to the Australian Labor Party and never has been.
MR MOORE: Madam Speaker, I hear a cacophony coming from Labor about who is affiliated with what. The amendment that I propose, if you have a look at it, is a very broad amendment, Madam Speaker, that says that an act of discrimination applies to "membership or non-membership of an association or organisation of employers or employees". The Teachers Federation is part of that.
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