The federal court has ordered the country’s largest building and construction union to pay more than half a million dollars in fines over acts of intimidation and coercion at a Brisbane government housing project construction site.
Friday’s judgment found Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) officials and delegates had engaged in unlawful acts during the 2012 negotiations with construction firm Grocon Constructors Queensland Pty Ltd, managing contractors of the Common Ground project in South Brisbane.
Justice Logan ordered CFMEU officials Paul Cradden, Joseph Myles, Mark O’Brien, Mike Davis and Jack Cummins to pay fines totalling from $20,000 to $40,000 each, and for the CFMEU to pay $400,000.
On Sunday Fairfax reported the union was also set to sign a settlement deal to pay Grocon more than $3.5m for staging unlawful blockades at worksites in Victoria. In March last year the CFMEU was fined $1.25m over three blockades including at Grocon’s Melbourne Myer Emporium worksite, which descended into violence with police in 2012.
Logan’s judgment on the Brisbane blockade found that while employees who engaged in strike action during the negotiations were conducting protected industrial action, behaviour by CFMEU officials and in one case, a CFMEU delegate, during the same period did not constitute protected action.
He listed actions including parking cars and setting up a site to obstruct access, and “upsetting, intimidating, abusing and threatening sundry Grocon employees and subcontractors and their employees” who sought to cross the picket line and access the construction site.
“There can be no doubt that the non-protected industrial action described was a deliberate stratagem on the part of the CFMEU to supplement lawful bargaining and protected industrial action,” wrote Logan. “Equally, there can be no doubt that the non-protected action was neither unique to that site or to those times.”
The action displayed a “paradigm example” of behaviour described by the royal commission into the building and construction industry, he said.
The findings detailed actions taken by the CFMEU members, including verbally abusing employees and threatening their future employment. Among the actions detailed in the findings, Myles, who was singled out by Logan “for special mention”, was said to have told several Grocon employees words to the effect: “you’ve all got a long time left in the industry, and we can influence your future jobs.”
In another incident, a project subcontractor spoke to Cradden and Cummins about his employees who wished to go back to work, and was told he would be “committing industrial suicide” if he brought them on site. Logan warned the CFMEU that an industrial organisation “which persistently abuses the privilege by engaging in unlawful conduct cannot expect to remain registered”.
The case was brought by the federal government’s fair work building industry inspectorate, and director Nigel Hadgkiss said such investigations were part of the department’s “increasing core business”.
“Coercion is particularly heinous conduct and has widespread impacts on Australia’s building and construction industry. Regrettably the conduct outlined in this case is but day-to-day activity on Australia’s building and construction sites,” Hadgkiss said in a statement.
The CFMEU has been contacted for comment.
