John Setka’s CFMEU members get 21pc pay rise

The Victorian CFMEU construction secretary says traffic controllers earning $200,000 a year work harder than most office workers who ‘are at home at 3.30 watching cartoons’.

Victorian CFMEU construction secretary John Setka outside the union meeting in Melbourne on Monday. Picture: Aaron Francis

Thousands of CFMEU members in Melbourne have endorsed a new pattern pay deal that delivers 21 per cent in wage rises over four years, reinstates a host of conditions scrapped under the Coalition’s building code including mandatory union flags on every project, and allows union officials to enter sites without a legal permit if they are invited by an employer.

The four above-inflation annual 5 per cent pay rises will apply a month earlier each year under a back pay clause in the agreement that also locks in a 36-­hour week, existing rostered days off, paid union meetings and increases in funeral coverage from $9000 to $15,000.

The agreement reinstates conditions banned under the building code including the flying of union flags, a requirement for employers to convert casuals to permanent employment, limits on the use of labour hire and ratios to employ a minimum number of apprentices.

Officials said builders had agreed that CFMEU representatives would be able to enter construction sites without a right of entry permit provided they were invited by the employer.

Applauding the pay rises, one member told the meeting: “Twenty per cent pay rises over four years. There’s not enough Ford Rangers in the country (to buy). The apprentices will have (Ford) Raptors.”

Victorian CFMEU construction secretary John Setka said he was sick of criticism that construction workers were overpaid, defending the $200,000-plus a year pay of traffic controllers.

“It’s a pretty hard job. People think just standing there with a lollipop (sign) and you’re getting 200 grand a year – they work massive hours,” he said.

“When it’s pissing down rain, there’s concrete pours going on, they just can’t walk away. You’re putting up with all sorts of lunatic drivers, you’re putting up with trucks flying past you, you’re putting your life in some other driver’s hands all the time.

“It’s a dangerous job and I’m sick and tired of people always putting us down and saying we get overpaid. The very same people that say we get overpaid as an industry are the same people who live in comfortable offices that our members built, with airconditioning in the summer and heating in the winter.

CFMEU members outside Festival Hall during the vote. Picture: Aaron Francis

“It’s all right for them to say, “gee, you get paid too much money”. Let’s have a look at how much they get paid. They work five days a week. Most of them are at home at 3.30 watching cartoons. We work massively long hours. We will never apologise for what our members get.”

Officials faced questions from the floor from members concerned about new inclement weather provisions that means in limited circumstances some workers will have to perform alternative duties during bad weather rather than be able to go home early.

Mr Setka did not reference his threats against the AFL and said he would limit his use of “f bombs” as the media was listening to the meeting via speakers that were set up outside for members unable to get into the full capacity Festival Hall.

“Look, there’s a lot of other stuff being said in the media. I’m not even going to dignify some of it because, you know what, my mum has an old saying, ‘the more you touch shit, the more it stinks’,” he said.

The ACTU on Monday again refused to comment on Mr Setka’s threat to wage a work to rule campaign on AFL projects.

Declaring this would be the last time he addressed a rank and file meeting before he finished in the job in January, Mr Setka said the members should be proud.

“We are the biggest, we’re the toughest union in the country and we are a household name,” he said.

Officials told the thousands of members not to return to work but to “go home, go to the pubs and see you tomorrow”.