CFMEU loss as bench rules code-compliant deal OK

Michaelia Cash tells CFMEU to get on with striking code-compliant agreements after union loses appeal.

‘It’s time the CFMEU stopped standing in the way’: Employment Minister Michaelia Cash. Picture: AAP

The construction union has failed to overturn a workplace agreement struck by property giant Lendlease that complies with the new national building code.

The Fair Work Commission yesterday rejected an appeal by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union over the approval of the deal reached by Lendlease Engineering in NSW.

Commissioner Julius Roe approv­ed the deal in June, despite finding Lendlease had breached its good-faith bargaining obligations under the Fair Work Act.

The CFMEU claimed the decis­ion exposed flaws in the act and challenged the ruling, claiming the commission erred in finding the agreement complied with workplace laws.

The CFMEU’s long-time rival, the Australian Workers Union, successfully applied to be a party to the new agreement, which was supported by a narrow majority of the workforce. Of 112 eligible workers, 96 voted in the ballot, with 50 backing the agreement.

A commission full bench said it was not satisfied there was an arguable case of error in the original decision and it would not be in the public interest to allow an appeal.

Employers will welcome the outcome, given that the CFMEU vowed in April that it would not renegotiate hundreds of workplace deals to comply with the Coaliti­on’s new building code.

Employers will be able to win federal work until next month without changing current non-compliant workplace deals, if they strike a new code-compliant agreement specifically covering the contracted federal work.

But, from next month, all agreements that have ongoing application to building work will need to be code-compliant.

The Labor Party failed to kill the code last week after Nick Xen­o­phon and One Nation joined the Coalition to defeat the ALP’s Senate disallowance motion.

Employment Minister Mich­aelia Cash called on the union to strike agreements with employers that complied with the code.

“It’s time the CFMEU stopped standing in the way of companies that are seeking to comply with the building code,’’ she said yesterday. “The building code is the law of the land, which all parties are required to observe.”

The CFMEU’s national construction division secretary Dave Noonan said the union would study the decision before deciding on its next move.

This week Senator Cash will detail a long-flagged legislative proposal to subject union mergers, including a proposed amalgamation between the CFMEU and the Maritime Union of Australia, to a public-interest test.

The proposal, which followed lobbying from business groups alarmed at the potential industrial strength of the merged union, was contained in the minister’s response in June last year to the recom­mendations of the trade union royal commission. However, the public-interest test was not recommended by royal commissioner Dyson Heydon.

Under the bill, a union’s “history of compliance with workplace laws” would be one criteria that unions wishing to merge would be assessed on.

The National Union of Workers and United Voice are also progressing plans to create a “super union” of 170,000-plus members.