SAWeekend: Notorious union boss John Sekta says he’s here to stay
He’s been labelled a thug and bully. But as the notorious union boss takes over the SA chapter of the CFMEU, John Setka has a message for all the haters - ‘we don’t apologise for what we do’.
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John Setka doesn’t do apologies. Not for himself. Not on behalf of his union, the notorious CFMEU.
“We don’t apologise for what we do,’’ Setka says. “We’re very successful. We have some of the highest wages in the country, if not the world for our industry. It’s a dangerous, tough industry. We’ve got to be tough.’’
Setka blew into Adelaide from Melbourne last month like the baddie in a western. He’d come to take over as state secretary of the local chapter of the CFMEU, an organisation he says is in financial bother and has struck poor deals for workers.
His arrival prompted all sorts of predictions of impending disaster from some in the local construction industry.
The CFMEU and Setka certainly have a long rap sheet in Victoria, after all.
A reputation as the most militant, most unreasonable union in the country, led by a man who has form for intimidating and threatening those who stand in his way.
Whether that be bosses, officials from the soon-to-be disbanded construction watchdog, the ABCC or even his estranged wife.
Setka, though, sees it all a bit differently.
He looks the part of the union official. He sports a leather jacket emblazoned with CFMEU Victoria patches, a T-shirt with the Big V and more CFMEU branding, jeans and brown cowboy boots. Bigger than expected. The 58-year-old is close to 190cm and physically imposing. You can see why he might scare some.
‘Never heard of him’ Lies, myths and stories
But according to Setka, people have the wrong idea about him. That the stories about him have morphed from myth into reality.
“Sometimes if people tell the story enough times they believe it,’’ he says. “And to be quite honest, I just laugh, I don’t even read the papers.’’
He points to the story that emerged when he arrived in Adelaide to assume control of the SA branch of the CFMEU. Opposition treasury spokesman Matt Cowdrey put it about that Setka had been seen in Parliament House.
Coupled with the revelation the union had made a $125,000 donation to Labor before the election, a picture was painted that Setka had come to town to collect on his favour.
Only one problem. It was, he says, nonsense. Whoever was in parliament that day, it wasn’t Setka.
Setka claims he has never met Premier Peter Malinauskas, that he couldn’t name a single member of his cabinet and the first time he talks about the Labor leader, refers to him as John and mispronounces Malinauskas.
“I’ve not been to South Australia since 2019. And that was at a conference in Glenelg. So how was I walking around unaccompanied in Parliament House, having meetings?’’ he asks. “This all comes from the Liberals. I mean how people can just make things like that up and just not be accountable for it, it’s just beyond me.’’
Setka’s confirmation as the union’s state secretary caps a tumultuous few years for the SA branch.
The Victorian had been highly critical of the SA branch and its former secretary Aaron Cartledge for many years.
Setka had sent emails calling them “weak c**s” and “bludging f**kers’’.
Cartledge eventually resigned after a committee of national union executives was installed to oversee the local branch but also said he had been worried about the militancy the Victorian faction had brought to SA.
Now installed as state secretary, Setka says SA business has nothing to worry about from the CFMEU. He bats away stories the CFMEU will look to lift the wages of construction workers by as much as 30 per cent.
Adelaide property developer Theo Maras warned the industry would be slammed by excessive wage claims.
“If you bring in organised unionism to the point where they are demanding a salary hike of 30, 40 per cent, which is what they are doing, it will become unaffordable to build,’’ he said.
Setka laughs off the claim and says he has never even heard of Maras.
“I heard a few developers carrying on,’’ he says.
“I have never even heard of them. Supposed to be the biggest developers in Adelaide? Well, I’ve never heard of him. They can’t be that big, really.’’
Setka, although he would like to lift wages, says it will take time. And will be done at a pace the industry can afford. During his week in Adelaide, he did the rounds of builders and subcontractors, assuring them the CFMEU wasn’t there to destroy them.
“We’re not going to drive a square peg into a round hole. I mean, we’re not going to bring Victoria’s economy to South Australia. You’ve got to work off what you’ve got,’’ he says.
Setka says he views the union as a “stakeholder’’ in the industry. That common sense dictates that without a healthy industry, his members won’t have jobs.
“We’re a strong, tough union but at the same time the builders and the subcontractors who employ our members have to make money,’’ he says.
“If they don’t make money, our members get the arse and if they don’t finish the job on time, or they finish the job at a loss, they’re not going to invest again and do another job, are they? So, this sort of perception that we just want to destroy and kick the shit out of the builders and make sure they make no money and send them all broke? I mean, where has that happened to Victoria?’’
Growing up in the union – and making his mark
Setka says the union and the industry have a good relationship in Victoria.He claims it is more efficient to build in Victoria than Germany and that he is on good terms with the Master Builders Association in Melbourne. Setka says the union’s willingness to work with developers during Victoria’s long Covid shutdown mended many fences.
Senior construction figures in Victoria spoken to by SAWeekend back Setka’s claim, even off the record.
“We have no problem with John and the union,’’ one prominent developer said.
But it’s easy enough to see why some are concerned by the entry of Setka into SA.
For a long time now, Setka has been painted as the archetype of the union bully boy.
Typecast as the thug from central casting.
Construction and unionism have always been in Setka’s blood.
His father Bob, who came to Australia from Croatia in 1960, was on Melbourne’s West Gate Bridge on October 15, 1970, when it collapsed, killing 35 people. Bob Setka was one of only 18 survivors but was badly injured in the accident.
His son, who says 18 is his lucky number, talks of how the union looked after his father, helped him back to work. The union was the Builders Labourers Federation, the famous BLF, that was deregistered by the Labor government in 1986.
“He was always looked after by the union because he’s one of the few survivors of the West Gate Bridge. And so I’ve seen that and always liked the union,’’ Setka says.
He remembers growing up with kids that lost their fathers on the bridge that day and says it’s why he’s “always been passionate about health and safety’’.
Setka wanted to be a motor mechanic and finished an apprenticeship but followed his father into the construction industry and into the BLF. He was asked to become a temporary organiser in the union and the path was set.
He soon made a reputation for himself. Through the 1980s and 1990s he was arrested dozens of times, including for assault and assaulting police, trespass and resisting arrest. He was fined many times for his actions but has only been jailed for contempt of court.
In 2003, he was fined for threatening Frank Bortoletto, a manager at construction company Grocon. The court heard Setka told Bortoletto and another Grocon manager he would “get’’ them. “You just f**king watch. I’ll get you. I’ve got a 21-year-old son and I swear on his f**king life, I swear on my son’s life, you watch. I’ll fix you up.’’
In 2010 he was fined again for threatening two managers from Bovis Lend Lease, allegedly saying “this job’s a f**king deathtrap and a disgrace. If you kill anyone on this job, I’m going to quit my f**king job and get you.”
Setka rationalises his many legal skirmishes as being part of the usual to-and-fro between employers and unions.
“A lot of my rap sheet is from, you know, picket lines,’’ he says. “We get hostile blues with picket lines and when you have a picket line, police are there and, you know, one minute you’re all having a snag together and the next minute saying ‘all right boys, we’ve got to get it on now’. The ’80s was a pretty volatile time in the trade union movement, there was a lot of picket lines, a lot of strikes, a lot of action. I mean, you have got to put it into context, it’s not like I went out and robbed any banks. I, you know, haven’t killed anyone.’’
Setka also believes he has been targeted because he is an easy mark for politicians.
He still carries the scars of being charged with blackmail in 2016 following the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, which “turned my whole life upside down’’.
He was arrested by armed police in front of his family in 2015 but the charges were dropped three years later during a preliminary hearing to see if Setka should face trial.
“It was just so much politics involved,’’ Setka says.
Out of the royal commission came the Australian Building and Construction Commission, set up by the previous Liberal government.
The ABCC would hit the CFMEU with fines that would run into the millions for various infractions.
At one rally he drew more criticism for threatening the watchdog’s inspectors, saying: “We will lob in their neighbourhoods, we will tell them who lives in their house and what he does for a living, or she. We will go to their local footy club, we will go to their local shopping centre.
“They will not be able to show their faces anywhere, their kids will be ashamed of who their parents are when we expose all these ABCC inspectors.”
Setka is certainly not apologising for taking on the ABCC, a body he says was little more than a front for the Liberal Party to destroy unions.
“We had unjust laws,’’ he insists. “We had laws that didn’t apply to the rest of Australia, that just applied to the construction industry. And if you’re going to play by a set of laws that are designed to never let you win, you’re never going to win. That’s the bottom line.’’
He talks of the time he took the ABCC to the High Court so a women’s toilet could be installed on a building site.
“Can you imagine if your wife came home and said, ‘We’ve had to go on strike in order to get toilets in our workplace’?’’ he says.
I never bagged Rosie Batty
But it’s not just been in the industrial world where Setka has found himself in the gun. There was so much outrage about his alleged comments about family violence campaigner Rosie Batty in 2019 that now-prime minister Anthony Albanese wanted to expel him from the Labor Party. It was reported that Setka had told a union meeting Batty’s activism had resulted in men having fewer rights.
Setka would later resign from the party but not because of the Batty furore. He maintains his innocence on that front.
“I never bagged Rose Batty, never bagged Rose Batty. Not once,’’ he says. Setka says, conversely, that Batty, whose son Luke was murdered by his father, is an inspiration.
“I actually used to say to people, have a look at her. Her son got beaten to death with a cricket bat. And there she is out there campaigning.
“I’d be in the foetal position in the corner sucking my thumb. I wouldn’t know what to do. I’d probably want to consider suicide if something (like that) happened to me.’’
Setka is adamant this is one time he would have apologised. It’s just that he has nothing to apologise for.
“(People asked) are you going to step down over it? Well, why should I? I never did it. I never said it. I never said a bad word about her. So that’s why I’m still here.’’
Setka’s complicated family life has also hurt him. He pleaded guilty in 2019 to using a “carriage service to harass’’. He had sent his wife Emma Walters a series of vicious and abusive text messages. “You are a c*** just like the rest of your family,” one of the messages read. Another said, “you are a treacherous Aussie f**kin c***”. Setka was placed on a good behaviour bond for 12 months and ordered to pay $1000 to an Aboriginal legal service.
Walters was in the news again last month saying she wanted a divorce from Setka and claiming the union leader had become “verbally abusive’’ during a phone call and was a victim of “coercive control’’.
Walters, with whom Setka has two children aged eight and 10, was also prominent in urging Peter Malinauskas to donate the $125,000 election donation to Labor from the CFMEU to a domestic violence charity.
“He is happy to take money with domestic violence fingerprints,’’ she said.
Malinauskas rejected that interpretation but did eventually return the money to the CFMEU after cars bearing Master Builders’ livery were vandalised, allegedly by union members.
Setka says the return of the donation had been “disappointing’’.
He says SA branch members had asked for it to be made because they wanted to help elect a Labor government.
“So quite frankly it was a kick in the teeth to them,’’ he says. He also says the link to alleged vandalism is “news to me’’.
Setka is not keen to talk about his estranged wife’s intervention in the debate.
“People want to beat something up into something that it’s not but, you know what, I don’t talk about it,’’ he says. “I separated from my wife. Our main concentration is our kids, that’s my number one concentration. People are blowing something up into bigger than Texas and, you know, I can’t help that. If people want to air that out in the dirty laundry, I mean, let them do it. I just ignore it.’’
So what will change under Setka?
Despite all the hoopla, Setka says many Adelaide builders are happy to have him in town. He says all the attention even sparked a few jokes. “One employer said to me, ‘there hasn’t been this much publicity since The Beatles came to town.’’
Showing his Melbourne credentials, Setka then said he didn’t even know The Beatles had ever visited Adelaide.
Setka says his leadership will help stabilise the industry. And modernise it. He says the SA industry is not as advanced as Victoria’s and needs to embrace more modern technology and safer practices, even hinting some jobs could be done with fewer workers.
“They’ve (SA) been doing things a certain way and there are just some people who still want to do it that way, even though it’s not really economically viable, it’s more labour intensive and they could probably do it quicker and cheaper and more safely,’’ he says. “Human nature is people don’t like change. That’s the bottom line.’’
Setka styles the CFMEU as the most successful union in Australia.At a time when the union movement seems increasingly irrelevant to most Australians, the CFMEU keeps growing in numbers and influence. Setka says it’s because CFMEU organisers are more interested in looking after their members than finding a safe seat in parliament “to be the next Bob Hawke’’.
“So all these other unions are disappearing up their own arseholes. We’re actually growing,’’ he says. “We must be doing something right.’’
Despite his claim SA developers have nothing to fear from him, Setka says a bit of conflict is not only inevitable but desirable every now and again, and says other unions need to toughen up. “Go out and grow a set, and actually have a bit of a blue because you don’t get anything without fighting for it,’’ he says.
“We say battles decide everything, you know, and you’re going to have a battle sometimes, you know, and we’ve had a lot of battles. We’ve won a lot of good conditions for our members. We’ve made sites a much safer place for workers. And we don’t apologise for that.’’
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