Victorian CFMEU boss John Setka ordered to stop poaching members
Victorian CFMEU boss defeated in court as the union’s recently departed national secretary takes aim at his ‘disgraceful’ tactics.
Victorian CFMEU leader John Setka has been ordered to stop poaching members from the union’s rival manufacturing division, after a full bench of the Federal Court upheld an appeal by recently departed national secretary, Michael O’Connor.
The full bench set aside an April decision that rejected Mr O’Connor’s application that Mr Setka’s construction branch breached union rules by poaching more than 200 members from the manufacturing division.
Mr Setka and senior Victorian officials were ordered to stop inducing, encouraging or advising members of the manufacturing division to resign from the division.
The decision is a setback for Mr Setka’s campaign against Mr O’Connor, who resigned last week as the union’s national secretary but remains manufacturing division secretary.
The case centred on whether the manufacturing division or the construction and general division was entitled to represent the interests of cabinet makers, floor layers and glaziers employed on construction sites in Victoria.
Justice David O’Callaghan favoured the interpretation of the union rules by Mr Setka’s branch and dismissed the application by Mr O’Connor, but the full bench upheld Mr O’Connor case.
In a strongly worded statement. Mr O’Connor’s manufacturing division accused Mr Setka of betraying workers by pursuing personal vendettas designed to destabilise the union.
Accusing Mr Setka and the construction branch of “disgraceful member poaching tactics”, the division said the conduct was part of his “shameful internal political objective of destabilising the manufacturing division and the national union”.
“The poaching of members for the sole purpose of pursuing personal vendettas and causing maximum instability to the manufacturing division, national union and frankly, the broader movement, was always completely unjustified and an utter betrayal of workers and their best interests,” it said.
“The taking of court action was the only viable path for the manufacturing division given the national union demonstrated a lack of capacity and political maturity to deal with the poaching and other acts of destabilisation which has since led the union to become a totally dysfunctional body.”
It called for the transfer of the many members currently in the construction and general division back to the manufacturing division.
Mr Setka did not respond to a request for comment.
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