91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳

BY SUE BOLTON

PERTH — Of the 392 adverse findings that the building industry royal commission made against Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, two-thirds were directed against the Western Australian branch of the union. Does this large number of adverse findings mean that the CFMEU is a criminal organisation, or that the WA branch is especially aggressive?

When you look through the list of adverse findings, the overwhelming bulk of them are for unions doing their job such as union organisers exercising right of entry by going onto building sites to talk to union members.

The laws that the WA branch has been accused by the royal commission of breaking were laws designed to criminalise normal union activity.

CFMEU WA secretary Kevin Reynolds outlined to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly the circumstances in which the union's WA branch copped so many adverse findings. He pointed out that since 1992 the branch has had to operate under the anti-union laws introduced by Liberal Premier Richard Court and his state industrial relations minister, Graham Keirath.

“Keirath and Court brought in some of the most draconian legislation for workers that we've ever seen in Western Australia”, said Reynolds. “They brought in a building industry taskforce which employed ex-police with the powers of a special constable and the right to prosecute union officials. Their main target was to try to keep us off projects and prevent us from exercising our right of entry.

“We were constantly being arrested by the police and charged. We won some of those cases and lost some of those cases over the 10 years of their government.”

Reynolds explained that the Court government brought in workplace agreements that aided builders, and particularly sub-contractors, and generally encouraged a group of employers which had previously cooperated with the union, such as Pindan Constructions and Universal Constructions, to “turn dog and line up with the government”.

Other employers took advantage of the anti-worker laws to sack all their workers one day and put them back on their books with another company the next day, the catch being that those workers had to sign new workplace agreements in order to get their jobs back and in many cases the workers lost 30% of their wages overnight.

“There was a lot of industrial action over that 10 years and that featured heavily in the royal commission. We're proud of it. We wear it as a badge of honour that we fought tirelessly to try and force those builders to pay decent wages and conditions to our members, and to building workers generally.”

During this 10-year period, Reynolds said that CFMEU organisers in WA had to deal with vigilante groups from the builders trying to physically stop them from getting on sites. “We had to make sure that our organisers were protected and so they went to sites with extra people assisting them to ensure that there was no violence.”

Under the Court-Kierath legislation, unions were locked out of work sites except with the explicit approval of the companies. If organisers wanted to visit their members on site, they had to seek approval from the employer by submitting their names and the names of union members on the job. If the employer rejected the request, or if there were no union members on the job, union officials would be denied right of entry.

If union officials went on site and the boss didn't want them there, the police would be called and the officials would be arrested. Reynolds said that CFMEU officials in WA were regularly arrested for insisting on their right to visit members on the job.

He said that the right of entry issue came to a head when one of union's organisers, Vinnie Molina, was prevented from going on site by billionaire property developer Len Buckeridge. In 2001, the full bench of the WA Supreme Court unanimously ruled that over the previous 10 years companies had been wrongly preventing union officials from exercising right of entry.

Despite this favourable court decision, about three weeks later, on November 21, police arrested CFMEU assistant state secretary Joe McDonald and organisers Jim Murphy and Graham Pallott when they tried to enter a Pindan Constructions site.

These arrests took place under current Labor Premier Geoff Gallop's government. It took this government 18 months after its election in February 2001 before it began to dismantle a portion of the former Liberal government's anti-union laws.

The charges against McDonald, Murphy and Pallott were dismissed by Perth magistrate Paul Heaney on March 31. Heaney found that a case of right of entry should never have come to court if the police had followed the law.

Heaney said that a further “real test” of right of entry would come later this year in a Federal Court hearing of a dispute in Woodside Energy is trying to prevent the CFMEU's right of entry onto the Woodside Petroleum project in the North West Shelf oil and gas field.

Woodside signed a greenfields agreement with the Australian Workers Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, and the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, but excluded the CFMEU despite the CFMEU having members on the project.

“There's been a lot of industrial unrest over the exclusion of the CFMEU from the Woodside project”, said Reynolds, but by the time that the court case is over, the construction project is likely to be over. However, the outcome would have some bearing on future projects.

Despite WA Supreme Court finding that companies had wrongly been denying union officials right of entry over 10 years, the building industry royal commission's main findings of unlawful conduct against the CFMEU's WA branch relate its exercising right of entry.

Reynolds slammed the royal commission as having been “an abject failure and a flop” because it hasn't found any evidence of corruption by union officials, which is what federal workplace relations minister Tony Abbott claimed it was set up to uncover.

The royal commission “went through the bank accounts of every [construction union] official throughout Australia and not one official has been charged with any corruption or had a finding against them in relation to personal corruption. So, the government spent $60 million on a royal commission to vindicate us.”

When asked to what extent the Gallop government had reversed the anti-union laws of the previous Liberal government, Reynolds replied that it hadn't done nearly enough. Restrictions of union officials' right of entry have been relaxed by the Gallop government, but it added in a restriction which wasn't there before — that if a building company doesn't like the actions of a union official, it can apply to have that official banned from being a union official.

“We've had the first case [under this new provision] where Sizer Builders decided that they didn't like the actions of Joe McDonald, and took him to the Industrial Relations Commission to have his right of entry withdrawn.

“The case never got to first base before it was thrown out of court. But it does show that they can try and prove that a union official is not a fit and proper person to hold that office.

“We don't have the same luxury to go and have company directors declared fit and proper people to hold office. Companies like the ones that I mentioned that constantly employ subcontractors who are involved in tax evasion and workers compensation fraud [are allowed to continue operating].”

The other thing that the Labor state government didn't do, said Reynolds, was to outlaw individual work contracts. It did away with the workplace agreements legislation brought in by the previous government, but it introduced a new form of individual agreement which amounts to the same thing.

“Geoff Gallup is never going to make any real difference to workers in this state. And there are very few Labor governments today that will. The ALP is a product of the capitalist system. It is there to prop up the employers. They have very little time for unions.

“Geoff Gallop constantly says that unions are a minority and represent no one. Well, one's only got to look at what the ALP represents: The number of members that the ALP has in its ranks around Australia is an absolute disgrace.

“When was the last time that Geoff Gallop went out and tried to sign someone up to the ALP? When do they go out and try to sell the benefits of being a member of the ALP? We do it every day of the week. We're out there trying to sell the benefits of unionism, the benefits of being in the collective.”

Although the Victorian Labor police minister was reported in the March 29-30 Weekend Australian as ruling out the use of Victorian police as “industrial stormtroopers” to enforce Abbott's war on building unions, the WA Labor government has made no such statement. Reynolds said he wouldn't be surprised if the WA Labor government cooperated with Abbott's attacks on the CFMEU, especially as Abbott has stated that he'll cut off federal funding to construction projects unless state governments cooperate.

From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, April 23, 2003.
Visit the