Thousands of construction workers march in Brisbane’s CBD at CFMEU protest

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Thousands of Queensland construction workers are rallying Brisbane today, protesting for better workplace health and safety standards. Unions are calling for a complete overhaul of the office of industrial relations and its Worksafe Queensland arm.

Transcript

00:00 Thousands of workers marched through Brisbane CBD this morning to where we're standing now.

00:06 That's outside Parliament House.

00:07 Now they're calling for changes to workplace safety laws in the state, which they say need

00:12 to be strengthened.

00:13 They're also calling for new laws making it mandatory to have female toilets at job sites.

00:17 Now the interesting thing about this particular protest is A) its size.

00:21 There were thousands of people here, but also the fact that these people are from a wide

00:25 variety of unions in Queensland as well.

00:28 There's been some interesting signs, including people carrying a cardboard coffin as well

00:34 as a skeleton and someone dressed as the Grim Reaper.

00:37 They're saying the government's got blood on its hands.

00:39 It's been quite intense this morning with some of those chants, but some speakers did

00:43 address the crowd this morning.

00:45 Here's what they had to say.

00:46 For 20 years I've been blowing on sites for women to get toilets and facilities.

00:52 Still to this day we're fighting for them and then when we get them we've got to fight

00:57 again to get them cleaned and to keep them locked so not everybody else can use them.

01:01 We've obviously been pushing for what we call BPICs, the best practice industry conditions.

01:09 That means every government job that's over $100 million must apply the best practice

01:14 conditions.

01:15 Health and safety, apprentices, First Nations training, females on our jobs get more females

01:22 into our industry because we have a skill shortage like you wouldn't believe.

01:26 Why we're here, as I said, I'm talking to the converted, we're an industry that loses

01:32 a worker every two weeks, year in year out, not just construction, manufacturing, the

01:38 blue collar industries.

01:40 What we do as a union, all the blue collar unions, and what we ask of government, the

01:45 number one thing about people's welfare is their safety and you'd think this government

01:51 would do that.

01:53 Well there's more of these rallies and marches planned coming up to next year's state election

01:57 as pressure mounts on the government to take action.

01:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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