Virtual Labor-CFMEU partnership shows up on Victoria’s bottom line

Labelled by courts as the “greatest recidivist offender in Australia’s corporate history” which thinks it’s “above the law”, the CFMEU has a business model of intimidation and coercion that has traditionally been confined to running a closed shop and pushing up costs on commercial building projects.

Ms Allan reportedly met CFMEU officials over the alleged blackballing of the Indigenous firm.

That was until the CFMEU suddenly started to muscle in on civil construction in Victoria, which had traditionally been the domain of the Labor Right-aligned Australian Workers Union. As The Australian Financial Review revealed, among the subcontractors and labour hire firms with AWU agreements allegedly strong-armed off government building sites was an Indigenous firm with no CFMEU agreement that lost work on nine projects, including the Suburban Rail Loop.

Building companies, relying on government tenders and needing to stay on side with the union, stayed silent. And state infrastructure authorities failed to intervene.

While the Andrews government would strongly deny it, union and industry sources claimed the deal was for the CFMEU to get coverage over civil in return for funding and political support ahead of the November 2022 state election.

As the Financial Review also revealed, just weeks before the state election Treasurer Tim Pallas was guest of honour at an ALP fundraising lunch organised by the CFMEU and attended by thuggish construction division secretary John Setka.

The courting of the CFMEU’s power and money appears to have been about Socialist Left faction of Mr Andrews and new Premier Jacinta Allan bolstering its control over the Labor Party – something underlined by Mr Pallas’ defection at the end of last year from the Labor Right to the Socialist Left.

Union’s influence over Labor priorities

But it also raises serious questions about the CFMEU’s influence over the Labor government and the big infrastructure spending that benefits the construction union and its members.

When challenged about tolerating the CFMEU boss’ influence in the Labor Party, Mr Andrews claimed he had never met Mr Setka. That’s not something Ms Allan – who was the minister responsible for Victoria’s massive infrastructure pipeline when the CFMEU moved in to muscle out the AWU – denies.

Its presence is so normalised in modern Labor that ACTU secretary Sally McManus claimed in 2017 to know nothing about the forerunner of the CFMEU, the Builders Labourers Federation, which was deregistered by Bob Hawke in 1986.

Ironically, the law-breaking CFMEU’s “no ticket, no start” business model rests on the legally protected right to represent construction workers under Australia’s anachronistic industrial relations laws.

The Fair Work Commission’s investigation into claims the CFMEU’s competition with the AWU involved standover tactics should also seek to get to the bottom of the role of the government and infrastructure authorities.

That includes the role of Ms Allan, who reportedly met CFMEU officials over the alleged blackballing of the Indigenous firm. Mr Andrews brushing off adverse findings in Operation Daintree demonstrates an institutional malaise that took hold in Victoria during his nine years in power.

The questions over the Suburban Rail Loop ultimately show up on the state’s bottom line. Victorians deserve better than to be governed by a ruthless political machine making decisions that benefit a renegade union, at great cost to the public finances.