Unionists ‘targeted airport staff to strike’

Unionists patrolled airport counters and asked specific staff to strike, undermining security, The Australian has been told.

Australian Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg.

Union delegates have patrolled counters at Sydney Airport and asked specific staff to strike as part of industrial action the Australian Border Force believes could undermine national security, The Australian has been told.

ABF commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg has accused the Community and Public Sector Union, which has held rolling strikes across government agencies since late last year, of “choreographing’’ industrial action in such a way as to undermine national security.

The Australian has been told that, last week, CPSU delegates were at the so-called “primary line’’ at Sydney Airport — the point at which passengers leave or enter Australia — asking individual staff to walk off the job.

“The current form of (industrial action), as choreographed by the CPSU, has ... created a situation where the ABF’s ability to appropriately respond to, and manage, the range of criminal and national security threats to Australia within the passenger stream, is degraded,’’ Mr Quaedvlieg said.

The walkouts appeared to be targeted to circumvent the “surge’’ capability ABF had put in place to manage the industrial action, resulting in potential points of weakness at Australia’s borders.

However, CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood yesterday accused authorities of “massively overstating” the threat to national security caused by the stoppages, saying much of the action was “normal, legal’’ industrial action.

“The department has legal notice of this strike action and thus has the capacity to deploy what they call surge deployment and we call strike-breaking,’’ she said.

Strikes at nine airports around the country are on hold pending a hearing by the industrial umpire on the government’s application to suspend the strikes for three months. In a statement yesterday, the Immigration Department said the planned action posed an “unacceptable risk” to the community.

The union vowed to fight the application.

As the ABF stressed it had not sought to “capriciously remove” workers’ right to strike, the CPSU questioned the “credibility” of the government’s evidence at a hearing at the Fair Work Commission in Melbourne on Sunday.

Ms Flood said the union would be “responsibly and vigorously ­assessing the veracity of (the) ... claims in this case … The (Department of Immigration and Border Protection) including the Australian Border Force have today made statements regarding our members’ industrial action which are inaccurate, selective and damage the reputation of our members and our union.”

However, she said the union would abide by the FWC ruling.

Government officials said the action caused intolerable congestion at airports, with harried, often inexperienced staff forced to manage hundreds of security alerts that appear in the system daily.

On Friday, the ABF took action in the FWC after officials decided those alerts could no longer be ­“acquitted’’ — investigated or acted upon — with low staff numbers and airport personnel under pressure to wave through passengers. The FWC granted an urgent injunction against the strikes late on Sunday.

The dispute over public sector pay affecting 120,000 workers has dragged on more than two years.