Construction Bosses take aim at Heat Stress provisions

 In a letter to Labor's Industrial Relations Minister, Murray Watt, the bosses of the Construction Industry have called for the outlawing of certain provisions in recent CFMEU Enterprise Bargaining Agreements. Of particular concern to me is the targetting of a provision that obliges the Employers to train their stass in how to identify and manage heat stress, and to train first aiders to respond to heat stress (Page 9 of the letter).

While the letter makes it look like the bosses are only concerned about the Union determining the training provider, anyone who has had the displeasure of working a blue collar job on a non-union site will know the terrible track record of employers when there is no body of workers to hold them to account. I remember years ago working for Santa Fe Wridgeways, the Furniture Removal giant, just after they busted the TWU presence at their Brisbane Depot. The company nominated WHS Rep (who was also supervisor of the sheds) took a blind eye when I alerted him to workers playing the game of getting a hammer down from a high place by throwing another hammer at it (without even wearing a hard hat, for what good that would have done). This year alone, I have been alerted to no less than three WHS nightmares in Bundaberg. The Salvation Army site at the Tom Quinn Community Centre has no WHS rep (reverting back to an "oh so overstretched" site manager), no Fire Warden, No First Aider, no fire alarm (except for the megaphone in a locked cupboard), and an outdated emergency plan. When I confronted management about this, they simply said they were working on it by consulting an external firm (of which, at least one of their meetings was delayed), and that management was too understaffed to do their jobs properly. Then, a local Caravan Park denied me employment for no particular reason (what reasoning they did give sounded like a lie in context, apparently someone else with the same trade certificate as me did an interview with them just before me, even though I did my interview at 9am the day after they advertised the position). Upon investigation, Worksafe QLD told me they were investigating "numerous" WHS violations at the Caravan Park. Later, a Macadamia Farmer did an interview asking me to do several weeks of complex chainsaw work without a first aider present on site at all, citing that they do that all the time on their farms "and it hasn't resulted in any issues."

Bosses and scabs cannot be relied upon to uphold the values of workplace health and safety. Their utter disregard for human life demands vengeance in the form of proletarian justice.

The full bosses letter can be accessed here: https://solidarity.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Letter-to-Watt1.pdf

Below are excerpts from the Bosses Letter;












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