Waterfront roped in for union pay brawl

Builders will back a push to scrap union-preferential clauses from new enterprise agreements, fuelling tensions with construction unions that are threatening a 72-hour shutdown of the Victorian building industry and action on the waterfront.

CFMEU members take to the streets of Melbourne on Wednesday to vent their anger at employers and the Albanese government. Picture: NewsWire / Aaron Francis

Builders will back a push to scrap union-preferential clauses from new enterprise agreements, fuelling tensions with construction unions that are threatening a 72-hour shutdown of the Victorian building industry and action on the waterfront in pursuit of a 21 per cent pattern pay deal.

As tens of thousands of workers rallied in Melbourne and Sydney to vent their anger at employers and the Albanese government, Electrical Trades Union Victorian secretary Troy Gray said employers were on notice that state building unions would strike for 72 hours if companies resisted the union’s “line in the sand” campaign to implement a CFMEU template agreement.

Naming major companies Laing O’Rourke, John Holland and Acciona, he warned employers against using the CFMEU ­administration to “wind back the clock decades”.

“We will make an example of the first employer that wants to take on 80,000 construction workers – your scalp will be ours, I promise you that,” he told a rally which police said was attended by 25,000. “And if there’s an orchestrated, continued attack on the working conditions and the living standards of Victorian construction workers, on behalf of the building industry group of unions, we will call a third rally, and that third rally will be on a Wednesday, and there’ll be a call for a 72-hour stoppage.

“We put the industry on notice. Victorian construction workers are some of the most productive and most efficient construction workers anywhere in the world. If you want to f..k with us, we will f..k with you.”

Aaron Wood, the maritime union’s Victorian assistant secretary, urged the rest of the union movement to join construction unions in fighting against the CFMEU administration as well as campaigning to stop employers unwinding the industry-leading four-year pay deal agreed under former state CFMEU leader John Setka. “We call on them to come down next time – come down when we shut down the ports, shut down the rest of the economy too,” Mr Wood said.

Master Builders Australia Denita Wawn said the 72-hour strike would likely be unprotected industrial action designed to pressure employers and undermine their right to bargain over the content of agreements.

While insisting Master Builders was not advocating cuts to pay and conditions under the agreement, she said the MBA held “concerns about restrictive clauses that don’t impact workers’ wages and conditions”.

“These include provisions to funnel money to union funds, restrict the free choice of workers, dictate that workers’ information is handed to unions when they start on-site, and give unions powers to call snap meetings at any time without following proper regulations,” she said.

Mr Gray and Mr Wood highlighted how the CFMEU had backed the MUA during the 1998 waterfront dispute, when about 1000 construction union members walked off the job to support thousands of unionists locked in a dramatic stand-off with hundreds of police officers at Melbourne’s East Swanson dock.

“Construction workers backed us then and we (wharfies) will back you guys now,” Mr Wood told the rally.

Mr Gray said the 1998 dispute was “a war of ages” – “well, let me tell you the attack on the CFMEU today is the war of ages and it’s a war that we will win.”

He praised Mr Setka, the former Victorian secretary who was not present at the rally, while downplaying the number of bikies in the industry. “We give people a second chance. If you have a tattoo on your face, you’re probably not going to get a job in real ­estate,” he said.

Australian Manufacturing Workers Union state secretary Tony Mavromatis said part of the campaign was to get the “dirty laws” imposing the administration on the CFMEU repealed.

“The union does not need ­administrators. The union is smart enough. We’ve been around for 150 years. We know how to fix our problems. We’ve fixed them before. Get the f..k out of our way and let us do our jobs,” he said.

CFMEU national secretary Zach Smith, who has retained his job unlike most of the state officials, said the unions were determined to sign up 1000 employers to new agreements in the next year.

“We’re not going to let any ­employer use administration to take wages and conditions backwards,” he said.

Leading chants of “union power” at the Sydney rally, ousted NSW CFMEU secretary Darren Mr Greenfield said: “let’s f..k these f..king bastards”, referring to the Labor state and federal governments.

Asked about the 72-hour strike threat during questions after his National Press Club speech, Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt said it was the first he had heard of the threat and “I will obviously need to give that some consideration”.

“Workers have got rights to take protected action under our legislation. And, you know, it’s a matter for Mr Gray how he ­chooses to describe those kind of things,” he said.

Asked whether the Victorian government would take action in the Fair Work Commission if ­unions issued notice of a 72-hour strike, a government spokesman said “industrial relations are a matter for our project partners, and we will work with them to understand the impacts”.

“We support the strong actions the federal government is taking to stamp out corruption within the CFMEU,” the spokesman said. “We are taking steps to stamp out rotten culture in construction in Victoria with our independent ­review and new laws to remove ­bikies from construction sites.”