New Labor MPs Doug Cameron and Greg Combet have supported calls from the AMWU for the Federal Government to get rid of a loophole that enables companies to deny workers their entitlements.

Senator-elect and former AMWU National Secretary, Doug Cameron, and former ACTU Secretary, Greg Combet, have argued that the Labor Government must fulfil its long standing commitment for law reform in relation to the ‘corporate veil.’

The ‘corporate veil’ describes the law that removes a parent company from responsibility for the debts of its subsidiaries.

This law allowed companies like Patrick Stevedores, during the waterfront dispute, and James Hardie, in the asbestos compensation case, to transfer assets out of reach of workers who were owed money.
 
AMWU National Secretary, Dave Oliver, said that Labor had called for reforms to the law from opposition and needed to hurry up and deliver in order to prevent any further disasters for working people.

“We don’t want another James Hardie where the company created subsidiaries with insufficient funds to provide compensation for the thousands of workers that suffered as a result of their employment with them.

“It was only the work of the union movement that brought James Hardie to justice and now that Labor is in power, they have an opportunity to do something about this.

“They only way to avoid a repeat of that is to change the corporations law to stop companies being able to rip off workers.”

James Hardie’s attempt to avoid its responsibilities was uncovered by the AMWU who blew the whistle on the scam which sparked a national campaign.

The call to reform the laws came on the 10th anniversary of the waterfront dispute. In 1998, Chris Corrigan, boss of Patrick Stevedores transferred his workers to labour hire companies and away from the parent company. By doing this, he avoided the responsibility of paying redundancy and other entitlements if the companies went bankrupt.