Unionists fined for worksite blockade

Building union heavyweight Michael Ravbar has been fined $5000 for his role in ordering the ­blockade of a crane hire company.

Union official Michael Ravbar has been ordered to pay $5000 in fines. Picture: AAP/David Clark

Union heavyweight and Labor powerbroker Michael Ravbar has been ordered to pay $5000 for his role in ordering the ­blockade of a crane hire company he wanted to coerce into entering a union workplace agreement.

Mr Ravbar’s employer, the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union, has been ordered to pay $50,000 and its national assistant secretary Andrew Sutherland will pay $3500 for breaching the Fair Work Act, following a Federal Court judgment handed down in Brisbane yesterday.

The court action was brought by the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which has been successful in having $2.68 million in penalties awarded against the CFMEU in Queensland and another $8.05m worth nationally.

Labor leader Bill Shorten has said he will abolish the ABCC if he wins government.

In 2012, Mr Ravbar, a member of Labor’s national executive and national vice-president of the CFMEU, ordered union officials to follow Universal Cranes employees from their storage yard and block them from working on Brisbane’s Legacy Way and Port Connect projects.

On one occasion, Mr Sutherland parked his car behind a crane, preventing it from operating on a construction site.

Justice John Reeves found the “deliberate and pre-planned conduct” involving a “large number of CFMEU organisers acting in concert” contravened the adverse action, coercion and discrimination provisions of the Fair Work Act.

He said the union carried out the blockade because Universal Cranes had made an enterprise agreement directly with its employees on terms that were different to the terms of the enterprise agreement put forward by the CFMEU.

Handing down his judgment yesterday, Justice Reeves said the contraventions fell into the “moderate range of seriousness” and that he could infer that ­Universal Cranes suffered “some loss or disadvantage” by not being able to access the Port Connect site for six weeks after the blockade incident.

He said the union was: “recidivist and that it has, by its conduct, demonstrated a continuing defiance of the law”.

Mr Ravbar and Mr Sutherland faced maximum penalties of $6600 each, while the union faced a possible penalty of $33,000 for each of its two contraventions of the Fair Work Act.

The Queensland branch of the Transport Workers Union was also mentioned in the Brisbane Federal Court chambers yesterday where Justice Berna Collier ordered an inquiry into the union’s 2018 election of officials conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission.

The inquiry, ordered after union delegate Darren White ­alleged the election was subject to improper conduct, will be heard on June 11.

Mr White, who received 660 votes, was beaten by Peter Biagini for the role of state branch secretary.