BY SAM WAINWRIGHT
SYDNEY
— The Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry, although
based in Melbourne, has also been holding sessions in other cities, including
Sydney. The most recent Sydney session finished on August 30. Green
Left Weekly spoke to the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy
Union's (CFMEU) NSW construction and general division secretary Andrew
Ferguson about the proceedings.
The most recent hearings were dominated by allegations against union
officials and delegates of thuggery and standover tactics. The commission
allows all kinds of allegations to be made against the CFMEU and published
in the media (without allowing the union to sue for defamation), but denies
the union's lawyers the right to immediately question the accusers or call
their own witnesses.
Accusations against the union have regularly made headline news in Sydney's
corporate press, while the union's reply has appeared days later in an
article the size of a postage stamp. This process is lubricated by the
commission's $700,000 media budget. The commission is providing the Coalition
government and the media with a steady stream of juicy stories to pave
the way for its next wave of anti-union industrial legislation.
The NSW CFMEU has taken court action seeking to have Terence Cole removed
as the commissioner because of his bias and a lack of procedural fairness.
Ferguson explained this move, “We're not confident of any victory in the
court system, but it's possible and therefore we want to swing a blow.”
An allegation made against CFMEU official Tom Mitchell is typical of
the commission's approach. An employer claimed that Mitchell had rung her
at home, demanded money, threatened to harm her children and compelled
her to go to the police over the matter. Despite strong resistance from
the lawyer assisting Cole, the CFMEU's lawyer succeeded in having the relevant
phone records made available. As Ferguson explained, the story turned out
to be a fabrication:
“That night, the woman did receive five phone calls. One was from the
Master Builders [Association], one was from the Office of the Employment
Advocate and there are three others that are identified as being not from
the union and nothing to do with the union.
“The report at Manly police station verifies that she did go to the
police station and it wasn't in relation to our union … but a sub-contractor
she owed who was demanding their money.”
Ferguson is angry at the commission's refusal to acknowledge the wrong
done. In the first sittings, a union official made a widely publicised
confession that he had lied and he was referred for prosecution for perjury.
The employer in the above case, however, was not. The commission refused
to recall her.
There have also been newspaper headlines claiming that the CFMEU stood
over employers for donations for a variety of funds such as the union's
family picnic day and its fighting fund.
Ferguson explained the fighting fund: “We've got close to half a million
dollars in it … and we've built it up to make sure the union has resources
to meet periods of attack and repression. We've always had a long-term
approach to the union and we've seen these sorts of attacks in history.
The union was deregistered from 1948 to 1962. We had a royal commission
in the 1980s and we've got a repeat of that repression against the union
now, so we've consciously built up our reserves.
“We get donations from members when we do a successful wage claim, individual
donations from members … I put $25,000 into it from a defamation settlement,
all our directors fees from our officials on boards go into our fighting
fund. None of it ever is a result of a fine being imposed on an employer
or pressure on an employer to donate.
“Also in the building industry we have builders and developers that
go bust and don't pay sub-contract companies. We intervene, we help [the
sub-contractors] to recover money. In return for our assistance we ask
them to donate to our fighting fund. There has never been an employer that
has said they've been pressured into donating to the union picnic or the
fighting fund.”
Ferguson also spoke about the ties between former CFMEU official Craig
Bates, some CFMEU delegates and organised crime figures. It has been alleged
that in return for contracts and other favours, a crook called Tom Domican
was going to support Bates' attempt to take control of the union. Ferguson
asserted that members involved in that sort of activity had been “cleaned
out of the union”.
He said: “We didn't cover it up. We went to the police with it and dealt
with it within our rules and amongst our membership. There really was a
conspiracy back then for these people to take control of the union and
we had a very difficult struggle against it. Our position in Sydney is
that we're not going to do business with anyone that associates with organised
crime. The job is hard enough as it is, [without] standover men approaching
delegates and members when they've got problems.”
From Green Left Weekly, September 18, 2002.
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