Militant unionists wearing GoPro cameras to enter worksites

Militant South Australian CFMEU officials have started wearing GoPro cameras to provoke on-site confrontations.

The Master Builders Association is seeking legal advice as CFMEU officials start wearing GoPro cameras and muscling on to building sites to provoke confrontations with managers. Picture: Annette Dew

Militant officials from the South Australian branch of the CFMEU have started wearing GoPro cameras and muscling on to building sites to provoke confrontations with managers.

The Master Builders Association is seeking legal advice on the use of the cameras and has introduced training courses for building firms on how to avoid confrontation during stand-offs about rights of entry. The move follows a court case that began in Adelaide last week where the union is trying to prosecute a builder, saying its officials were harassed and abused by management, with the company insisting it was the union that started the conflict.

The MBA says the case is a new tactic by the union, describing it as “industrial lawfare” aimed at ­fomenting conflict and tripping up managers who might have a limited understanding of the right-of-entry laws. “These are all good blokes who are just trying to get some actual work done and they’ve got these guys turning up with lapel cameras trying to rile them up,” SA chief executive Ian Markos said yesterday.

“Some of the boys on site are no shrinking violets and it is important that they don’t get fired up because some of these officials know how to goad them and they know the ins and outs of all the laws better than some bloke who is on the tools and trying to make an honest dollar.”

Mr Markos said the MBA did not know whether it was legal for the union officials to film people at work without their consent and was seeking legal advice. He said the MBA had only recently started training courses for its members to help them deal with the more militant approach being taken by the construction union.

A CFMEU spokesman dismissed the MBA’s claims but confirmed they were now wearing GoPros because builders “clearly don’t understand their obligations around union right of entry”.

“Lax attitudes towards safety are rife in the SA construction ­industry,” the spokesman said.

“Health and safety conditions on SA worksites are widely considered to be sub-par compared to other states and territories. Some union officials in SA are wearing recording devices such as GoPros when they go on worksites in order to document the behaviour of confrontational builders who do not understand that they are required to allow lawful entry to conduct safety inspections.”

But Mr Markos said builders in Adelaide felt they were being subjected to entrapment tactics. He also said that as far as he was aware there was a legal cloud over whether anyone from management or unions could film people without consent on work sites.

Sources within the SA branch said there was discussion about using GoPros some years ago but the union decided not to use them because they were too provocative and could generate avoidable conflict because people would ­object to being filmed.

But the SA branch, at the centre of a battle for control following the ousting of moderate former secretary Aaron Cartledge, this year changed its mind and is now filming construction managers on site visits as a matter of course.