Case Dropped against CFMEU’s Noel Washington, Charged with Defending His Lawful Union Rights

In Victoria, Australia, on 29 November, a state prosecutor dismissed charges against a construction trade union leader who faced six months imprisonment for exercising basic trade union rights. The union leader, Noel Washington, the Senior Vice President for the Construction, Forestry, Mine, Energy Union’s (CFMEU) Victoria Branch, was to appear tomorrow, 2 December, in a Melbourne Magistrates Court on charges that he failed to show up for interrogation by a government watchdog agency created by former Prime Minister John Howard.

The criminal charge against Washington was brought by an empowered Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), which has authority to conduct broad and over-reaching investigations into industrial matters. Washington’s alleged crime was that he refused to come before an ABCC inquisition in June on matters that occurred inside a union meeting.

Noel Washington

Washington, in his CFMEU capacity, met with workers during a lunch period and off-the-job union meeting in 2007. The ABCC had been demanding an account of comments made in that meeting.

Several trade unions, including the ICEM, registered strong letters of protest at current Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd over the Washington indictment. The unions called on Rudd to publicly refute the “errant misuse of power given the ABCC by the Howard government,” and called the charges clear breaches of ILO Conventions 87 and 98, the Freedom of Association and Right to Bargain Collectively Conventions. The Building and Woodworkers’ Union (BWI) also issued a global statement calling on trade unions everywhere to protest the charges against Washington.

The CFMEU says Washington is not alone in defending commonly accepted union rights. Some 100 other building tradesmen have been up on similar charges by the ABCC in the recent past. On 12 September, Washington’s first court date, CFMEU held rallies at the courthouse in Geelong and elsewhere across Australia. The union and the Australian Council of Trades Unions (ACTU) had begun airing television ads against ABCC’s wide swath of powers in the days just prior to the dismissal.

Fair Work legislation now in Australia’s Parliament is expected to strip the agency of its powers, as well as giving agency itself a make-over.