War in the Building Industry !

A few decades ago the building industry in Australia was in absolute chaos as militant building unions used their muscle to disrupt jobs to force unreasonable demands on employers.  It was a tactic that caused massive cost over-runs and forced several of our biggest construction companies into bankruptcy.

One of the feared disruptions was to declare a safety issue in the middle of a concrete pour - and have the union members walk off the job.   It is essential that the entire floor of a high rise building be completed in a single operation and if there is an interruption to the concrete pour the work done has to be jackhammered and removed - and that entire floor restarted.  That can increase costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A similar tactic was to declare a concrete supplier " black " for some contrived reason and have union members refuse its trucks access to the site - halfway through a concrete pour.  Not only was the pour interrupted, those trucks were stuck with concrete loads that can only solidify unless they are emptied in a reasonable cycle of time.  The unions had the power to cause massive cost over-runs and union bosses didn't seem to care that their actual workers were losing wages.

The unions were hauled before an industrial court and an agreement hammered out and there has been relative peace in the building industry since, but militancy is again emerging in the Sydney building scene as union tactics try to force a building company to sign a " pattern enterprise agreement " that is highly favourable to the union.

The militant CFMEU has faced a Federal court which found that it had threatened action against  a company with " intent to coerce  ".  The court said it sent a simple message that formwork companies were to sign that enterprise agreement proposed by the CFMEU, or the union would pick one of them and smash the company selected.

Evidence before the court cited an instance when CFMEU officials deliberately kicked down a safety rail before instructing workers to leave the site because of the absence of safety rails.   Cement trucks were also stopped from entering a site by CFMEU officials sitting on their bonnets to prevent safety movement.  In each of these instances the objective was to force the signing of an enterprise agreement.

The court has the power to decertify a union that disobeys the law and remove its officials from office.   That is an action that it usually is reluctant to take but this return to illegal tactics of coercion will be disruptive to the national economy and needs to be stopped before it spreads to other union  groups.

It is illustrative that the very militant head of the entire union movement in Australia is likely to get political endorsement to run for a seat in the Senate.   Perhaps that says something about how union militancy is viewed in political circles.