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21 March, 2012
Dave Oliver, National Secretary of the ICEM affiliate Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU), this month accepted the nomination of Secretary of the national labour centre, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). He will succeed Jeff Lawrence at May’s triennial Congress of the ACTU in Sydney.
Lawrence, from United Voice, which prior to March 2011 was the Liquor, Hospitality & Miscellaneous Union (LHMU), said on 8 March he would not seek another term at ACTU. Oliver, 48, has headed AMWU since May 2007, and is credited with driving Australia’s manufacturing policies since the financial crisis with an agenda of job preservation and job creation.
He is also known as a proponent of union campaigning and establishing pattern bargaining throughout AMWU’s different sectors. His toughest task will be to guide the country’s trade unions during 2013 federal elections and retaining the Fair Work Act. Business groups, as well as Conservative and Liberal politicians, seek to roll back labour legislation to elements contained in the dead-and-gone WorkChoices law.
As a teenager, Oliver worked as an apprentice mechanic in the lift industry, and got his first taste of trade unionism at the age of 19 when he began work in the construction industry in Sydney. He served as Assistant National Secretary of the 130,000-member AMWU from 1996 to 2001, and from 2002 to his election in 2007 he was the Victorian Branch Secretary of the union.
Oliver was endorsed two weeks ago by several unions, including the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU), the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU), and on 9 March, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union’s (CFMEU) National Executive Committee endorsed him.
With that endorsement, CFMEU National Secretary Michael O’Connor paid tribute to Lawrence, calling him “a consistent advocate for working people across decades” and thanking the 59-year-old Lawrence “for his tireless efforts in working for the abolition of the ABCC,” the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the body given broad anti-worker powers under the government of former Prime Minister John Howard.
In a statement to AMWU members upon accepting the nomination as ACTU Secretary, Oliver said a prime focus of his will be “the growing threat to jobs and the economy, particularly in those sectors impacted by the mining boom and the high Australian dollar, not only in manufacturing but in finance, tourism and the service sector.”