No love lost with CFMEU as division seeks divorce

The CFMEU’s mining and ­energy division will move to split from the country’s most militant union.

Christian Porter says the CFMEU mining division’s move showed it had strong views about the ­impact the militant construction division was having on its members. Picture: Gary Ramage

The CFMEU’s mining and ­energy division will move to split from the country’s most militant union, becoming the first division to use the Coalition’s new union demerger laws.

About 300 members of the division’s national convention will on Monday vote on a motion backing an application to the Fair Work Commission for a ballot to consider splitting from the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union. Senior officials said they believed the national convention would support the holding of the ballot, ­although the union’s construction division in Queensland on Tuesday urged members to vote against splitting, saying it would “play into the hands” of the ­Coalition.

Capitalising on the civil war engulfing the CFMEU, Attorney-General Christian Porter brought in laws to permit disaffected divisions to vote to break away and form their own union, taking their assets and members with them.

Mr Porter said on Tuesday the mining division’s move showed it had strong views about the ­impact the militant construction division was having on its members.

Tony Maher

Tony Maher — the union’s mining and energy general president who held talks with Mr Porter last year about the demerger laws — said the national convention would consider whether the division should make an application under the new “withdrawal from amalgamation” provisions in the Fair Work Act.

“This would lead to all members having a vote on our future as a mining and energy union,” he said. “National convention is the most democratic forum of our union, representing mining and energy workers across Australia. As soon as they have considered this issue, we will move forward according to their wishes.”

Under the demerger legislation, the commission is required to consider a range of factors ­before approving an application, including whether the amalgamated organisation has a record of not complying with workplace or safety laws.

The union’s former national secretary, Michael O’Connor, has flagged the manufacturing division will also examine leaving, but no decision has yet been made on when to pursue a demerger.

Hostilities between the rival divisions remain unresolved, with the construction division using its superior numbers to convene a national executive meeting on Friday. But the mining and ­energy division has denied suggestions of a membership coverage dispute with the construction division and does not support the executive meeting being held.

In a social media post on Tuesday, the union’s Queensland construction division urged “our brothers and sisters in the mining division (to) not forget how much we have achieved standing ­together united, and how much weaker that voice would be if there was a split”. “Don‘t play into the Morrison government’s hands,” it said. “Vote NO to splitting up your union.”

Mr Porter said the new legislation was designed to give a choice to registered organisations like unions and their members as to whether an amalgamated union was operating in their best interests.

“Parts of a union can leave if it doesn’t accept the lawlessness of the union in question,” he said. “If only Anthony Albanese was as principled and clear in dissociating the Labor Party from the CFMEU as the mining division is now doing.”

Mr Maher quit as the union’s national president in November, accusing the construction division of bullying, and declaring the union “impossibly divided and dysfunctional, with no repair in sight”. Mr O’Connor resigned as ­national secretary in November following a campaign by construction and maritime division officials, including Victorian secretary John Setka, to force him out. Supporters of Mr O’Connor said earlier no-confidence motions against him were “revenge” by Mr Setka, who was angry that Mr O’Connor did not publicly support him after Mr Setka was charged with harassing his wife, and the Labor Party moved to expel him.