You might have heard of this, but it is going by the name of the ‘Ensuring Integrity’ Bill. However, this bill is not at all about integrity, it is all about taking away your rights to vote for your union, be represented by your union, for your union to merge or even for your union to actually exist. 

 

This bill is about disqualifying unions or officials claiming it will punish the rough operators. But in fact, it will hit all unions drastically. If a corporation submits paperwork late, they can be charged an $80 fee, but if this law passes, a union could be shut down if this happens. After the Banking Royal Commission, we saw CommBank executives oversee 56,000 criminal breaches and yet have not faced any prosecution or scrutiny. However, if we made a mistake on a document, we could be shut down, and officers could be disqualified. How is this ensuring integrity? Where is the integrity for those who are not being paid super and the employers get a slap on the wrist? Or the families of those who have lost loved ones at work but the employer is walking around scot-free?

 

The ‘Ensuring Integrity Bill’ is all about finding any way to shut down unions and stop them from doing what we need to do which is fighting for workers safety, your rights and for more EBA jobs. This Government knows that we can’t do that if we are tied up in red tape and paperwork. They know every organisation can make errors on paperwork every now and then, and that is how they are trying to get us.

 

This bill will be before Parliament soon. Currently, this bill sits in the hands of Senators Jacqui Lambie (TAS) and Pauline Hanson (QLD). We urge you to contact these senators before this bill is passed to tell them why these laws go too far and that without unions working conditions and rights will only get worse.