If bullying is wrong, so is backing the CFMEU
LAST Friday thousands of Gold Coast schoolchildren were allowed to leave their uniforms behind and wear regular clothes to school – as long as they wore orange.
The reason? To mark a national day of action as part of the “Bullying, no way’’ program.
The day is one of many admirable measures taken in our schools that have made it abundantly clear to children that bullying is never acceptable.
How strange then that in the same week the Queensland Teachers Union chose to associate itself with the knuckle-dragging bullyboys of the CFMEU.
The same CFMEU that as recently as March 9 was fined almost $1 million by a Federal Court judge for a campaign against builder John Holland at two north Brisbane construction sites.
The long-running campaign saw unionists call workers who dared clock in “grubs, scabs and dogs”.
The same CFMEU slammed by another judge for illegally disrupting work at a Commonwealth Games work site at Carrara in May 2016.
In that case the union bully boys held two-hour “meetings’’ twice a day for three weeks, costing contractor Hansen Yuncken about $700,000.
A Gold Coast Bulletin investigation at the time showed some indolent members lying around sleeping and enjoying seafood barbecues hosted by the union during the supposed meetings.
The same CFMEU which drew the ire of no less than Malcolm Turnbull for the action of one of its officials at the Commonwealth Games Athletes Village site at Parkwood.
The union official was filmed angrily threatening a GROCON employee and threatening to shut down the site. “You know what, I know your phone number. I know where you live c***. I’m telling you now,” the official says.
There are many more such examples from a union wellknown for its bullying and intimidation.
They make the thugs of the CFMEU unlikely role models for kids rightly taught that bullying is never acceptable.
Which makes the decision of the Queensland Teachers Union to distribute stickers bearing a Eureka flag logo appropriated by the CFMEU perplexing. QTU general secretary Graham Moloney said the teachers’ union would “make sure” the stickers are “in every school in Queensland” as part of a campaign in protest at an Australian Building Construction Commission decision to ban union logos from Commonwealth construction sites.
What this has to do with teachers is anyone’s guess.
The furious reaction to the QTU’s stance from some quarters was a little over the top though. A couple of stickers are hardly going to succeed in “indoctrinating” kids.
Children, especially younger ones, love stickers of all kinds. If their teachers want to pretty up their cars and workbooks with stickers too, well that’s just dandy.
It isn’t going to do much to influence bright young minds.
But hardworking teachers deserve far better than to be associated with the bullying, loudmouthed layabouts of the CFMEU.
Unlike the militant construction union’s more vocal members, teachers are conscientious, diligent and work bloody hard. They help instil proper values of decency and respect in our young people, as demonstrated again by the anti-bullying day last Friday.
It is hard to imagine a sector of the workforce that could be any further removed from the world of CFMEU thuggery.
Many of these dedicated teachers, especially in rapidlyexpanding northern Gold Coast schools, have a heavy workload and less than ideal working conditions.
Demountables are still rife, while sweatbox Coast schools continue to be denied access to the State Government’s Cooler School Zones program.
As I write it’s 9am and already 32 degrees outside. I’ve got the air conditioning on, helping me to concentrate. But most teachers and children at the local state primary school just 2km away have no such benefit.
The QTU should be demanding our Premier works as hard on behalf of these kids as she does for cartoon ones.
They should be fighting so hard to help their members in these burgeoning schools that they have no resources to waste barracking for construction union bullyboys who, given their symbiotic relationship with the Labor Party, hardly have trouble making their voices heard.
Schools are to be applauded for their zero tolerance approach to bullying which was epitomised by the day of action last Friday. If the QTU took a similar zero tolerance approach, they’d have nothing to do with the CFMEU.