Bashed, harassed and black-banned: CFMEU sides with bikies, not women

One was bashed by a bikie-linked health and safety representative on his lunch break from a government-funded project in an attack caught on camera.

Another was locked in a small room at a half-built state government hospital by a man previously jailed for violence against women, who smoked ice as he detained her.

A third was bashed outside her work site, also taxpayer-funded, by a man with deep connections to senior CFMEU figures and a similarly frightening criminal past.

The women’s stories are each uniquely disturbing, but they also reveal a pattern of the troubled union pushing men with violent histories onto worksites and then punishing women who complain about their behaviour.

This pattern draws in building companies, too, because even though these violent men are often shoehorned into their roles by their mates in the union, it is building companies, big and small, on government jobs that agreed to employ them in the pursuit of industrial peace and then chose to keep their crimes under wraps.

While the examples uncovered by this masthead and 60 Minutes involve Victoria’s huge Big Build infrastructure scheme, the issue doesn’t stop at state borders, according to insiders from several building unions.

Asked about the evidence of women being bashed and sexually harassed, CFMEU national secretary Zach Smith – who has also taken charge of the Victorian branch as part of the administration of the union in the wake of the Building Bad scandal – hit out at the perpetrators and admitted his union had failed to do enough.

“The men who have harassed or violently attacked women must be held responsible for their actions, but I believe the whole union has let these women down,” he said.

“If we are serious about changing culture and supporting women, we, the male leaders of this union, must stand up and make it an issue for all of us.”

Leading domestic violence campaigner Jess Hill said the Victorian government must take ultimate responsibility for violence linked to its sites, adding that inaction on bikie infiltration was always going to lead to unsafe work environments and violence against women.

“We can get tangled up in legal questions about who is legally responsible for protecting these women. But ultimately this is taxpayer money. So I think Victoria has a unique responsibility to be fronting up and making sure women on these sites are protected,” Hill said.

The revelations come as the investigator appointed to uncover crime and corruption in the union and wider building industry accused the Victorian government of covering up the extent of wrongdoing across the Big Build.

The chief investigator for the CFMEU administration, Geoffrey Watson, SC, said the Big Build had become a “place of resort” for violent criminals.

The Rebels bikie-linked CFMEU health and safety representative caught on video bashing his girlfriend was on his lunch break on a rail level-crossing removal project when the attack took place.

The video was anonymously sent to the union last year. Smith sacked the bikie as part of the post-Building Bad cleanout of bikie figures, but sources said others in the union had pushed to get the man a new Big Build role.

The video captures the state government site employee kicking the woman as she lies on the ground while he screams at her that he will “cave” her head in and calls her a “f---ing dog”.

Hill said the footage made her “feel utterly sick to my stomach”.

In the second case involving a violent union-backed figure on a state government site, the CFMEU ordered the employment at the Footscray Hospital project of an ice addict after he was released from jail for viciously stalking and threatening to kill a woman.

The man, Nick Bouras, is accused of subsequently locking female worker Lilly Munro in a small room on the site where he then smoked drugs.

The Footscray hospital project.Credit: Joe Armao

“[He was smoking] a crack pipe with ice in it and blowing it in my face and locking the door of the store room,” said Munro, who worked in traffic management. “He was off his head. He was off his face.”

When Bouras was sentenced to jail for stalking a woman he had only recently met in 2018, a judge described the man as a drug user with an extensive criminal record with convictions on drug and firearms offences, as well as a separate stalking offence years earlier against another woman who was his former partner.

Bouras continues to work on construction sites across the state.

In an interview with this masthead and 60 Minutes, Munro said sexual harassment was normalised and endemic as the men who meted out shocking treatment to women appeared to have protection from the CFMEU or state government contractors.

“It’s nothing short of putrid. I hate to say it, but we just don’t belong there,” she said. Munro said women were often hired on the Big Build because of the “way you look, what use you can be to the men”.

When Munro reported the “terrifying” ice smoking incident to the CFMEU and Footscray Hospital subcontractors, she said, she was attacked for making the lead contractor, Multiplex “look like they’ve got a drug problem”.

Lilly Munro had to deal with aggressive and offensive behaviour at work and then repercussions for reporting it. Credit: Alex Coppel

She said she was then “black-banned” from work on government sites. Black bans are informal and unlawful boycotts of employees or companies that prevent them from working.

Munro’s black-ban claim is corroborated in text messages sent by a union delegate, who told her she had been “flagged” by the CFMEU and as a result would not find work on the Big Build.

“I can’t work on any site. I can’t provide for my family and I have to look over my shoulder all the time and my children’s shoulders. I can’t even let my little boys play in the street,” Munro said. “They’re not allowed to ride their bikes and hang out with other kids just because I’m just too afraid that I’m going to get a retribution for speaking up about what’s actually right and what’s wrong.”

Munro’s text messages also reveal an employee of the government’s Big Build Southern Program Alliance, who remains working on rail level-crossing projects sent multiple messages to Munro, seeking to trade work opportunities for nude photos.

In the third case uncovered by this masthead, a young woman was bashed outside her Big Build work site by a relative of two influential CFMEU figures in April 2024.

The perpetrator had weeks earlier been forced onto a different Big Build site by his union relatives, despite his extensive criminal record for violent offending.

The bashing was reported to Big Build subcontractors, but according to a secret recording of a senior union official responsible for women’s rights, Lisa Zanatta, the perpetrator’s relatives in the CFMEU were inadvertently tipped off and the victim was black-banned from the Big Build.

On the recording, Zanatta apologises for her role in potentially placing the victim in even more danger, saying the tipping off of the perpetrator’s family was accidental and that Zanatta was sorry she had “f---ed up”.

Unaware she was being recorded, Zanatta also appeared to concede she was aware of multiple cases of “women in these situations that can’t continue to work [on the Big Build] because of violent men”.

There is no evidence Zanatta endorsed bans, but some CFMEU delegates and organisers appear to have supported them with the knowledge of some members of the union’s leadership.

Quizzed about the comments, Zach Smith, the CFMEU national secretary, said the union had failed to adequately support Zanatta as she responded to cases but that he backed her efforts.

He said the wider union had let down the victims of violence as well as the woman in the union given the task of supporting them.

“The union has had limited resources to deal with this issue,” Smith said.

In a statement, Zanatta said she might not always have “got it right, but I have always tried my best for the women that I represent”.

“I frequently have to deal with complex situations in which female members are put in vulnerable positions as a result of power structures in a male-dominated industry. Those power structures make it far too difficult for women to feel safe and respected,” she said.

“I feel deeply for those members. I have not and would never intentionally expose women to further harm and injury.”

Hill said the Zanatta recording showed the union was “woefully inadequate” in its response to a problem it had created by forcing violent bikies onto government sites where they could wield huge control over women.

Watson said he had only just been made aware of the bashing of women by criminals and bikies linked to the union.

“I’ve seen a lot of terrible things, but the way that these women were treated, they may be amongst the most terrible,” Watson said.

“I can tell you right now as from after this interview, I’ll be going back to the administrator, and I’m confident that he will place it right at the top of the list.”

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