The ACTU [The Australian equivalent of the AFL/CIO or Britain's TUC] is seeking legal advice after it was accused by a government department of misrepresenting the background of workers featured in a campaign against new workplace laws. The independent Office of Workplace Services (OWS) found that claims made by five of eight sacked workers who appear in ACTU television commercials attacking the laws do not add up. The OWS report also found the ads had depicted the sacking of workers in circumstances that would have been legal under the old workplace laws, despite ACTU suggestions to the contrary.

ACTU secretary Greg Combet said he had written to the OWS asking it to explain why the workers were investigated and a summary of the report released to the media. He said he was completely confident the stories of the workers featured in the advertisements were true. "They have not lied, the ACTU stands by the ads and stands by the claims that have been made," he said. "The whole thing stinks of dirty-tricks political attacks on the integrity of ordinary working people."

Mr Combet said the publication of the information might have damaged the sacked workers' reputation and breached privacy laws. "It's clear the (investigation was) used for political processes and in the process people's personal information has been put into the public realm and we are very angry about it," he told ABC radio. "We are taking advice about a number of things and we will consider that when the advice comes in. "People have had the courage to come forth and tell their story of how they've been treated under the new laws." He said the workers did not deserve to be subjected to "unfair and flawed investigations", and the leaking of personal information to the media.

But Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews said the findings showed the ACTU could not be trusted. He said the OWS report was not leaked to the media, but had been provided following claims by the ACTU and the media that the new workplace laws were failing workers. The independent OWS had investigated the claims and provided its findings to the media and others who had been inquiring about them, he said. "What Mr Combet is doing is now attacking the umpire because he doesn't like the outcome of the investigation into these matters," Mr Andrews said.

He said the OWS had the responsibility to decide whether the full report into the investigation should be released. "The main point here is it's exposed a phoney political campaign on the part of the ACTU and it shows that one can't trust anything the ACTU says about these things," he said. He said the ACTU had returned to using actors in their latest round of TV commercials because the so-called real cases didn't stack up

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