Union memberships inflated and pay deals not done under Asmar, warns official

A senior official at the Health Workers Union has called for the organisation to stand down its secretary Diana Asmar, claiming the branch is dysfunctional, that memberships may be inflated, staff have been underpaid and scores of pay deals have not been finalised.

On Friday, the national executive for the Health Services Union will consider whether it should take legal action to put the Victorian branch – known as the HWU – into administration.

Health Workers Union Victorian secretary Diana Asmar.Credit: Justin McManus

The decision comes after Asmar refused to stand down following reports in The Age and The Australian Financial Review of an investigation into her branch allegedly spending $3 million on “ghost” printing services and Asmar claiming almost $200,000 in questionable reimbursements.

Before that meeting, this masthead has seen a letter sent to the HWU’s branch committee of management warning that the only appropriate course was for Asmar to stand aside until the investigation was finalised.

“Every day that Asmar continues to refuse to step down causes further reputational damage to the HWU,” the official said.

Asmar has in private vigorously denied the claims regarding ghost printing. She is yet to provide an explanation to the union’s national office, which has now publicly said it is taking the complaint extremely seriously.

The concerned staffer, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, said the Fair Work Commission had invited Asmar in March to respond to concerns that $187,000 of $198,000 of union money paid to her for reimbursements were for catering and entertainment – the equivalent of $900 a week over four years.

Some reimbursements were allegedly claimed before the expenditure, they said, including one two years before, and some expenses were allegedly claimed and paid to Asmar twice.

HSU national secretary Lloyd Williams said the senior official’s complaint was “further justification of the national executive’s strong and unanimous position that Diana Asmar should stand aside while the Fair Work Commission investigates allegations of impropriety”.

“These are extremely serious matters, and clearly people within the No.1 branch of the union share our concern for how this impacts on their members as well as the broader HSU and labour movement,” he said.

“The HSU has no tolerance for alleged misuse of union funds.”

Asmar did not respond to requests for comment.

The anonymous official said that as part of its investigation, the Fair Work Commission had also raised concerns a significant proportion of the receipts and invoices were partially or wholly illegible, with dates and payment details obscured, according to the letter.

The official said Asmar had informed them that another person in the union was to blame. However, they claimed that person continued to manage the union funds, including paying invoices.

The letter also reveals a split in the leadership of the union. Since early this year, the official said, Asmar had instructed all staff not to contact HWU assistant secretary Dave Eden or involve him in industrial matters.

Meanwhile, Asmar had been “largely absent” from the HWU over the past several months and, with Eden unable to be contacted, “it has often times felt like there is no one in charge”.

The union was allegedly failing to onboard new staff, and struggled to get payslips and leave balances right, with employees “repeatedly underpaid superannuation”.

Meanwhile, the union’s industrial division could not keep up with its workload and close to 100 enterprise agreements were in negotiation or getting approval.

Some agreements were meant to have full union campaigns because of their membership size, but had been hamstrung by issues with resourcing and decision-making.

The staffer also warned that “many more” EBAs were out of date and the union had not initiated bargaining for them because there was no capacity to do so, with more due to expire by the end of the year.

They also raised concerns that the branch was not purging its membership records as required under union rules, potentially inflating member numbers that determine union representation at Victoria Labor conferences and affiliation fees paid to the party.

Last month, Asmar allegedly provided the HSU national office with data on its Ambulance Victoria members to support a demarcation dispute with another union, suggesting the branch had 85 members.

However, the official said all 85 members had, in fact, resigned, and the HWU had allegedly not been involved in negotiations with Ambulance Victoria for a decade.

“This is just one incident where our member numbers were misrepresented and inflated … But it does give me cause for concern about whether the member numbers that the HWU has been reporting that we have, are accurate,” the letter says.

The HSU national executive has sought legal advice on whether it can apply to put the Victorian branch into administration based on the alleged misuse of funds, dysfunction and Asmar’s refusal to stand aside, pending the investigations.

However, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act holds parties to a high bar to prove dysfunction under its administration powers.

So far, the HWU’s branch committee of management has deferred any decision to stand aside Asmar while the investigation is ongoing.

Instead, HWU senior vice president, Lee Atkinson, an Asmar ally, has responded to the national office’s requests to stand down Asmar pending the investigation by asking what powers the branch committee of management has to make it happen.

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