Unionists set upon by cops, then lawyers
BY ALANA KERR
SYDNEY — Having failed to keep construction union officials out of enterprise agreement negotiations at its Rooty Hill factory on July 7, giant construction parts company CSR has now threatened legal injunctions to stop the union from entering the plant.
The company called police to evict two Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union officials, NSW secretary Andrew Ferguson and organiser Malcolm French, from a workers' meeting to discuss the company's proposed enterprise agreement. Police were unable to do so and the meeting ended by rejecting the company's offer.
In the days following, CSR's law firm, Fisher Cartwright Berriman, threatened injunctions in the Federal Court to deny CFMEU officials any further entry, claiming that the union doesn't have coverage of workers at the Rooty Hill site. CFMEU officials responded that the union is a party to awards covering CSR and that they were invited onto the site by the workers.
Ferguson told Green Left Weekly that the company had no right to refuse the CFMEU entry and that the union has filed an application to initiate a formal bargaining period at the plant, which would make industrial action by members, planned to begin on July 25, legal under the Workplace Relations Act.