CFMEU and officials hit with $1 million in penalties

A judge declared ‘drastic’ penalties are needed to deter the union from ‘shocking’ conduct.

Michael Greenfield leaves the Downing Centre. Picture: John Grainger

The CFMEU and three senior ­officials have been penalised more than $1m for coercing and unlawfully picketing a Sydney crane company, with a judge declaring the “drastic” penalties were needed to deter the union from “shocking” conduct that “has no place in our society”.

Finding the union displayed “utter contempt for the rule of law”, the Federal Court ordered $132,500 in penalties be personally paid by the three officials, including $65,000 by NSW assistant state secretary Michael Greenfield, following the union’s “inexcusable” campaign to force Botany Cranes into a union ­enterprise agreement and to reinstate a union delegate.

Imposing $850,000 in penalties on the union, judge Steven Rares said the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and ­Energy Union had an “appalling” history of industrial law-breaking, coercion was one of its “tools of trade” and it was not prepared to acknowledge to the court or the community that its conduct against the company in 2019 was “unacceptable”.

NSW branch president Rita Mallia. Picture: John Appleyard

He said the union’s NSW branch president, Rita Mallia, who was ordered to personally pay a $20,000 penalty, lent her status to the unlawful picket and coercion of Botany Cranes, ­succumbing to the “embedded culture in the union”.

“That culture treats the laws enacted by the parliament as ­irrelevant to what the union and its officials feel free to do in breach of them,” he said. “The union regards any penalty as a mere price of its doing business.”

Justice Rares said it was essential that senior officials such as Ms Mallia be deterred from unlawful conduct. “The price of contravention must be set so high that persons who might feel emboldened by the toxic culture, revealed in the union’s history of defiance of the law, know that the court will exercise its powers to deter them and any others who might contemplate doing so in the future,” he said.

NSW assistant secretary Rob Kera was ordered to personally pay $47,500 in penalties, while the union must pay $30,000 compensation to Botany Cranes.

The court will also determine whether part of the penalties imposed on the union will be paid to NSW police, who assisted staff leave and enter the company’s premises during a picket.

Justice Rares also ordered the union pay $133,000 in legal costs incurred by the Australian Building and Construction Commission during the proceedings. The judgment is the second-highest penalty secured by the ABCC since it was re-established in 2016.

Locked in a dispute with the union after refusing to agree to an enterprise agreement, Botany Cranes believed an employee and union delegate, Howard Byrnes, was providing advance information about the company’s jobs, allowing the union to sabotage the business.

When asked whether someone was tipping off the union, Mr Byrnes said: “Maybe sign the EBA and it will stop.” Not believing his denials, Botany Cranes terminated his employment.

Senior union officials organised a 50-strong picket outside the company, with Mr Kera declaring the union would “fight to the death” to get Mr Byrnes re­instated.

Rob Kera. Picture: Peter Kelly

When a female operations manager arrived for work, she heard the picketers say “Here’s one of them” and “They’re a bunch of dogs”. She said she cried, feeling fearful and ill.

Mr Greenfield told the company it was going to get “really bad for you” unless Mr Byrnes got his job back and the company signed the EBA. The company caved in. In his judgment on Thursday, Justice Rares said Mr Greenfield’s conduct over a week was “shocking”, describing his threats to get Mr Byrnes reinstated as menacing, shameful and “nothing less than industrial thuggery”. He said the union’s conduct “displayed utter contempt for the rule of law”, demonstrating that the culture of the union, and its senior officials, was “simply “might is right” or “union power”.

“That conduct has no place in our society. Over 170 prior decisions of courts imposing penalties on it and its officials did not deter the union from attempting, by unlawful coercion and improper ­pressure, to ‘wipe the floor’ with Botany Cranes until the company capitulated to the union’s ­demands to reinstate Mr Byrnes and sign the CFMEU-proposed EBA.”

Justice Rares said the union was not prepared to abide by the law, and the penalties to be imposed must be “drastic”, as the union seemingly could not be deterred from engaging deliberately in contravening conduct.

“In my opinion, the union will only be deterred from further contraventions of the very serious nature of those that occurred on 25 January, 2019, of the act by a severe, if not drastic, penalty,” he said. “As the prior history of contraventions of each Mr Kera, Michael Greenfield and the union showed, coercion is one of the union’s tools of trade which Mr Kera and Michael Greenfield employed, even after each was penalised for doing so.

“None of the contraveners expressed any contrition, let alone a recognition of the need not to repeat the contravening conduct. “The union, with its history of contraventions, is not prepared to acknowledge to the court or the community that what it did on 25 January, 2019, was inexcusable and unacceptable.”