Penalties loom for CFMEU site visits at Adelaide airport construction project

The union faces a raft of massive fines from months of industrial mayhem at an Adelaide airport construction project.

Taivairange Savage.

The CFMEU is facing a raft of massive fines resulting from months of industrial mayhem at an Adelaide airport construction project where union delegates illegally entered the work site and shouted profanities at site managers.

The Federal Court is finalising its ruling in a case brought against the union by the Australian Building and Construction Commission over its conduct at the Watpac site, with a picture emerging of a toxic workplace where relations between management and workers had totally collapsed.

The Australian revealed last year that Watpac stood down two of its employees after a menacing and anonymous out-of-hours telephone call was made to a CFMEU representative.

Around the same time, the union’s delegates and organisers were themselves muscling their way on to the Watpac site and harassing managers.

Federal Court documents seen by The Weekend Australian show that 10 members of the union and the union itself are facing 144 unlawful entry charges where delegates barged on to the site in groups without accreditation citing safety concerns.

On several occasions in 2019 CFMEU delegates arrived at the worksite raising concerns about unsafe harnessing and scaffolding for members working at heights, and also complaining about what they said was an unsafe gas bottle.

In April 2019 Watpac site manager Robert Kamminga was confronted by three unionists demanding entry and said: “We will need to see your permits and ID.”

CFMEU delegate Alex Tadic replied: “We don’t have them and we will be going onsite anyway.”

The exchanges became more heated on later occasions when the CFMEU members arrived, again demanding inspections.

One of the most heated involved a delegate by the name of Te Aranui Albert and CFMEU city organiser Taivairange Savage, who poses on his Facebook page wearing a black hoodie bearing the words “God Forgives, the CFMEU doesn’t” and flipping his middle finger at the camera.

In one exchange at the Watpac site, Te Aranui Albert said to Mr Kamminga “F--k you, I’m not dealing with you” and described him to his face as “a waste of f--king space” and a “f--king idiot”.

Mr Savage then joined in with the abuse, saying to Mr Kamminga: “Go do your colouring-in books, you f--king c--t”.

The Weekend Australian understands the CFMEU has accepted almost all of the charges and is now working through the agreed facts of the case ahead of whatever penalty is brought down by the Federal Court.

The Watpac case involves misconduct on both sides with Watpac having already dismissed two staff who were implicated in threats made against CFMEU delegate Emosi Veron and his partner, Santana King, in June 2019.

Mr Veron was at a basketball game with his wife when he received a phone call from an unidentified male caller who said: “Are you listening very carefully as this is very important and you need to understand what I am saying.

“You’re costing the builder lots of money, you don’t know who they are and what they can do.

“You have a newborn on the way so it is in your best interest to cease the work you are doing.”

The Weekend Australian has now obtained a confidential report prepared at the behest of the CFMEU by a private investigator, retired Victorian police detective Stephen Curnow, which documents that incident and asks why the ABCC failed to act on the menacing telephone call.

“The inaction of the ABCC in addressing this clear case of coercion is of concern,” the report states.

“The reasons for this decision merit further inquiries as to why they did not consider this as part of their scope of responsibilities. I would think that intimidatory and threatening phone calls to an individual advising them to resign from a company under threat of physical violence to themselves or family member to be well within this purview.”

Watpac would not comment on the case and CFMEU national construction secretary Dave Noonan said the union would also respect the court process but hit out at the “one-sided” ABCC prosecution.

He said the ABCC had “a visceral anti-union bias”.

The Watpac case confirms the increased militancy of the SA branch of the CFMEU following the ousting of its moderate former state secretary Aaron Cartledge in 2018.