Defend building union organiser John Lomax against the criminalisation of union activity
Posted by John, July 27th, 2015 - under John Lomax, Royal Commission into unions.
Tags: Building industry, Building unions, Building workers, CFMEU
This is a letter I sent on Sunday to the Canberra Times on the arrest and charging of building union organiser John Lomax. It has not yet been published.
Tally: Not published on Monday. Not published on Tuesday. Stay tuned.
John
CFMEU organiser John Lomax has been charged with blackmail. (David Ellery and Michael Inman, ‘Former Raiders star on blackmail charge’ The Canberra Times Saturday July 25, page 1.) What is Lomax’s alleged ‘crime’? According to the union it is forcing an employer into an enterprise agreement and winning higher wages. That is precisely why unions exist.
Unionists and union leaders should be very very worried about this attempted criminalisation of industrial activity. If successful it will undermine every union in Australia. The charges against Lomax are an attack on unionism.
It should come as no surprise that the ‘back to the past’ Abbott government is trying to take us to the pre-1820s era and the idea of that unions per se are a criminal conspiracy. In the most famous anti-union witch-hunt of the time, in 1834 the six Tolpuddle martyrs were sentenced to be transported to Australia for the crime of forming a union and demanding higher wages.
John Lomax and the CFMEU stand in that proud Tolpuddle tradition of unions fighting to exist and to improve workers lives. Every unionist must support him and the CFMEU against Abbott’s Tolpuddle style Royal Commission witch hunt aimed at destroying the one union in Australia that always stands up for its members and wins real gains for them.
One final point. Every media report I have seen on the Lomax charges also mentions the blackmail case against Halafihi Kivalu. To conflate the action against Lomax involving an industrial matter with that against Kivalu, allegedly involving personal gain, means, in my view, that John Lomax cannot receive a fair trial (assuming this travesty of justice gets that far.) But that conflation is the whole point, isn’t it? It is a further attempt to tar the legitimate activity of unions with the brush of illegality.
Dare to struggle, dare to win.
John
Here is a link to the CFMEU statement on this politically motivated act.
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Time July 27, 2015 at 2:02 pm
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