• Aradina [She/They]@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    Not sure whether putting the Construction part of the CFMEU into administration or not is the right decision.

    Even IF the CFMEU is fucked, this is massive overreach, imo. Even if we take the claims at total face value, do they want criminals to not have jobs that pay the bills? Because that’s how you get crime. No one is getting into cooking meth for the funsies.

    That combined with the alignment with union busters makes it pretty clear that this is an attempt to roll back worker conditions.

    • Taleya
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      4 months ago

      yup, and oh look, they recently gave us the carrot of “right to disconnect” as if it was something we previously didn’t fucking have

      • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa
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        4 months ago

        To a degree the right to disconnect is like working from home, those policies affect white collar far more than blue collar, or min wage service workers, etc.

        So in my mind it makes sense that, that reform went through without much issue. Everybody is on the side of the middle clas white collar worker it seems.

        Its noticeable how much media time work from home has got since COVID over just about every other issue impacting workers. Maybe its because journalists identify more with it, maybe other classes of workers haven’t the power to effect change, and influence national conversations.

        • Taleya
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          4 months ago

          Really? Because the first place my mind goes to is service workers. Not answering a call wanting to get them in off shift, and not facing penalty for it.

          White collar workers would not be penalised for not responding out of work hours, it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen

      • Zagorath
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        4 months ago

        Eh, I think strictly codifying a law that basically exists but is potentially vague can be a good thing. This makes it absolutely undeniable that you have the right to disconnect from work, where previously you’d have to kind of work it out and employers might try to argue exceptions.

        It’s like minimum passing laws for cyclists. A car going past a cyclist at 90 cm is obviously dangerous and irresponsible driving and any reasonable person would say it’s a chargeable offence for that reason. But in practice it very rarely got prosecuted, and even when it was it didn’t always succeed, because motornormative society defaults to saying the cyclist must be wrong. With a hard and fast rule that passing at less than 1 metre breaks the law, nobody can quibble about subjective matters like whether it’s dangerous or reckless.

        • Taleya
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          4 months ago

          As a regular cyclist, your analogy is giving me zero faith in lawful application

          • Zagorath
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            4 months ago

            Ha! Yeah that’s fair. But the problem in that case is with the police refusing to do their job. Under the new laws, if it does go to court, a conviction is pretty much guaranteed. Unlike poor Richard Pollett, whose killer got off scott free on charges of “dangerous operation of a vehicle” prior to the minimum passing laws.

    • TinyBreak
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      4 months ago

      Even IF the CFMEU is fucked, this is massive overreach, imo. Even if we take the claims at total face value, do they want criminals to not have jobs that pay the bills? Because that’s how you get crime. No one is getting into cooking meth for the funsies.

      So what are we supposed to do here? Let the union clean itself up? We’ve been making that joke a very long time.

      • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa
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        4 months ago

        Don’t disagree. But Max-Chandler’s comparison with banking, and religious institutions kind of makes that a hard argument to make.

        Why are we suddenly seeing such hard and fast political reaction against the unions when theft, collusion, and some of the worst criminal behaviour imagineable, has been committed and Governments have taken a slow approach, and in other cases not seemed to pull their finger out at all.

        I think its the comparison and rhetoric that really smells here, because lets be honest, administration isn’t shutting down the union, some people will lose their jobs, but the representation of workers will probably be maintained… in this present case.

      • Zagorath
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        4 months ago

        I’d suggest that if there’s dirty behaviour that needs to be cleaned up, that would be a matter for the police. Not for the government to pass a bespoke bill disregarding the judiciary process for.