Firm faces questions on dealings with National Union of Workers

A training and labour firm will be examined over its dealings with the National Union of Workers.

Former union leader Derrick Belan, left, and former NSW Labor MP Paul Gibson at the ACTU National Day of Action in Sydney.

Union-linked training and labour firm Ashley Services Group will be examined over its dealings with the National Union of Workers’ NSW branch.

Ashley Services founder and a senior executive have been called to give evidence at trade union royal commission hearings starting today.

Founder Ross Shrimpton and Paul Rixon, chief executive of the company’s labour hire division, will be questioned during hearings into the union over the next three days.

Ashley Services, which has ­repeatedly missed earnings guidances, resulting in a share price slump, and faces a possible class action on behalf of aggrieved ­investors, has emerged as having multiple connections to union figures since the royal commission was launched last year.

Former Labor leader Simon Crean, a one-time general secretary of the Federated Storemen and Packers Union, a precursor to the NUW, who joined the board of Ashley Services after its float last year, walked away from the ­company last month, as did chairman Peter Turner.

As foreshadowed in The Weekend Australian, the NSW branch of the right-wing NUW is in ­upheaval ahead of the inquiry’s last scheduled block of public hearings before it reports to the government next month.

NSW secretary Derrick Belan, in the post since 2001 after succeeding his father Frank, abruptly quit last month, to be replaced by his deputy, Wayne Meaney.

The Australian has learned Ashley Services entered into a greenfields enterprise bargaining agreement with the NUW, through its main subsidiary, ­Action Workforce labour hire, in 2012, co-signed by Mr Rixon and former NUW secretary Charlie Donnelly.

The deal directs all workers covered by the deal to invest in the $4.5 billion industry super fund LUCRF Super.

Mr Donnelly was named in commissioner Dyson Heydon’s interim report as being responsible for setting up IR21, the NUW slush fund that contributed to Bill Shorten’s 2013 campaign for the Labor leadership.

Mr Donnelly resigned from the NUW and became chief executive of LUCRF last year.

Mr Heydon’s report also found LUCRF Super used members’ money to donate to the slush fund.

As revealed in The Australian, in 2013 Ashley Services bought Oneforce, the labour hire company at the centre of the deal ­between the Australian Workers Union once led by Mr Shorten and Chiquita Mushrooms, which was also ­examined by the royal ­commission. Oneforce went into liquidation in the same year, leaving its directors bankrupt and still owing ­casual workers $500,000 in unpaid superannuation.

In the year before it collapsed, the company made a series of payments to the AWU totalling $82,142.50, including transfers to the AWU after the buy out.

Ashley Services declined to comment last night.