ACCC rejected CFMEU settlement offer of $3m fines

ACCC rejected a $3m settlement offer from the union that would have accepted heavier penalties than those imposed after trial.

CFMEU State Secretary John Setka. Picture: Stuart McEvoy.

Australia’s competition watchdog rejected a settlement offer from the CFMEU which would have resulted in the union accepting far more severe penalties than those eventually imposed by the Federal Court after a protracted trial.

Federal Court Justice John Middleton today published his full, unredacted reasons for judgment in the high profile secondary boycott case, in which the militant construction union was found to have waged an unlawful secondary boycott campaign against concrete supplier Boral at two Melbourne sites as part of a broader dispute with its industrial nemesis, Grocon.

Justice Middleton ordered that the union pay just 40 per cent of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s costs; a decision that leaves tax payers footing a hefty legal bill from the partially successfully action.

In explaining his decision on costs, the judge revealed that prior to the case going to trial, the union offered to pay $3 million in fines for a dozen contraventions of competition and consumer laws and accept an injunction which would have restrained the union from hindering Boral from delivering concrete for four years.

Instead, the ACCC rejected the offer and went to trial, where it succeeded in proving only two of the dozen alleged breaches against the union. The union was fined $1 million and the ACCC failed in an attempt to injunct it from interfering with Boral in the future.

Justice Middleton found it was not unreasonable for the ACCC to reject the settlement offer so close to trial. However, the revelation will embolden the union, which has already promised legal reprisals after blackmail charges against two of its senior office holders, John Setka and Shaun Reardon, were abandoned by Victorian prosecutors.