From Chapter 4
'Frameworks of fear'
Lottery "tickets"
The blindness of the Cole Commission to the irresponsibility of bosses was spotlighted by its failure to uncover the "vibrant market for false certificates of competency" around Sydney throughout its hearings. NSW public servants sold 4,000 fraudulent credentials for working with hoists, front-end loaders and explosive tools, or in dogging, rigging and scaffolding. The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) documented these malpractices. Not a trace of either scam surfaced in the Cole proceedings. Yet his Commission spent $66m. chasing up allegations against union officials for its secret volume. Semi-literate non-English-speaking labourers knew what was going down. Silks on $1,500 a day with police powers did not.
Employees, the self-employed and employers had differing reasons for buying these tickets and assessments. Their justifications underline why neither market forces nor the good will of employers will hold down rates of death and injury in the construction sector.
Employees: Some workers bought the fake documents on the oldest of grounds - to put food on their tables. A labourer who paid $1,000 to get certificates for carpentry, dogging, forklift and hoist confessed: "I wasn't sure whether to do it because I knew I was wrong. I have a young family to think about and extra money would help a lot."[1] In several cases, the workers who bought the Tickets were experienced and competent for the skills covered by the false documents. They had been doing those tasks for years but had difficulty in explaining how to do so on an exam paper. Some held Permits to perform the work for which they bought Tickets. One WorkSafe inspector excused his corruption:
These guys are working 30, 40 levels above the ground. They make one mistake and it's the last one they make. I consider them to be adequate in their duties. That's the wrong way round, sure, but I still consider them safe. At least they won't die.[2]
In other cases, the workers who paid for phoney qualifications put at risk their own lives, those of their fellow workers and of passers-by.
Self-employed: Tickets were useful to so-called independents since the more skills for which they held a licence, the better chance they had of being hired, and the more they expected to earn. A larger fraction of these workers were called upon to perform tasks for which they had neither training, certification nor experience, making them a danger to everyone. Here was one more instance of the threats posed by sub-sub-contracting outside of EBAs.[3]
Employers: Employers bought tickets for their employees in order to switch them from one "trade" or "skill" to another and thus save on time costs. The owner of a bricklaying concern explained the benefits to his business from buying certificates:
For example, an employee having a dogging licence enables him to work with the crane crew and, if required, to undo the brick cage without having to wait for a dogman. Another example would be having someone with a forklift licence moving a pallet of bricks from one area to another without having to wait for a forklift driver. From a contractual responsibility, 99 percent of these tasks is the responsibility of the principal contractor. However, it costs money and time to wait for the builder to obligate his contractual duties and carry out these tasks.[4]
This admission illustrates one more way in which the force of the market threatens safety. The expansion of capital powers the reduction of time-costs.
Transfield - again All three reasons for going after fake Tickets collided when Transfield bought certificates for some of its employees. Transfield's addiction to violating OHS regulations across its 50 years was outlined in the previous chapter.[5] Even Cole found fault with Transfield's safety record on the Melbourne CityLink.[6] In a move typical of those violations, the managers on Sydney's Northside Tunnel hired inexperienced and untrained people to replace battlers for safety. Transfield attempted this switch-over just as the project was coming to its end, with the rush to finish on time and within budget. If attention to safety slowed the operation, Transfield stood to lose money.
In the days before the Australian Building and Construction Commission, Transfield dared not sack union activists just because they were insisting on a safe workplace. The firm had to get around the custom that the order of dismissal be in accord with the number of Tickets that the workers held. The chairman of the On-the-Job Safety Committee told the ICAC:
We had quite a number of competent people that didn't hold legitimate tickets but had been driving machines for years on permits. A change in middle-management superintendent took place where a lot of unskilled people were brought on board and [to replace] the people that were potentially creating industrial problems as regards the way the job had been driven.
In short, the Transfield managers purchased phony Tickets for the newcomers to justify employing them in place of the activists. In response, the Safety Committee chairman bought himself an Excavator's Ticket to hold onto his place. When the job ended, he suffered the consequences of being "deemed too safe", as he told the ICAC: "The last two and a half years I have been out of work … because of some of the issues that I used to raise, and I believe that's filtered through to the tunneling industry.".[7] Had the ABCC existed when this worker was battling for safety, its police would have gone after him. As it was, Transfield escaped prosecution, while the unionist suffered the maximum penalty for a worker - the loss of his livelihood.
Cole's terms of reference allowed his Commission to pursue the trade in fake Tickets. However, his presumption of guilt by the workers because of their "ingrained culture" prevented a repetition of the derailing of the Royal Commissions into the Painters and Dockers and into Building Productivity. The state had set up those investigations to cripple unions only to expose the big end of town through its bottom-of-the-harbour tax evasions and collusive tendering. If industrial action by unionists is criminal, why are the violations of health and safety laws by employers not treated as real crimes?
The harrowing of labourers by the Cole Royal Commission and by the construction police is normal for capitalist justice and parliamentary politics. The attacks are not signs of creeping fascism but carry forward the class nature of bourgeois democracy and law, as is documented throughout this study, and conceptualised in the concluding chapter, "Killing no murder".