Unions inquiry guilty of ‘gross misuse of power’: Paul Howes

Former AWU boss Paul Howes has lashed counsel for the trade union royal commission for a “gross misuse of power”.

Former union heavyweight Paul Howes.

Former Australian Workers Union boss Paul Howes has lashed counsel for the trade union royal commission for a “gross misuse of power” after allegations the union failed workers under his watch.

Mr Howes’s scathing submission to the inquiry on the flawed deal between Cleanevent and the AWU also sounded a warning to Commissioner Dyson Heydon that accepting counsel’s arguments could “lead the Commissioner into legal error” and possibly expose his final report to judicial review.

“All up, the submissions of Counsel Assisting do not stand up to any level of forensic scrutiny”, Mr Howes’s submissions published by the commission today stated.

Submissions by Jeremy Stoljar and other counsel assisting earlier this month invited “findings damaging to Mr Howes’ reputation in circumstances where he has not been given the opportunity of responding to the criticisms and aspersions made,” Mr Howes’s own legal submissions alleged.

Mr Howes, who left the union last year, testified a written statement tended by the inquiry at hearings last month that he could not remember a memorandum of understanding bearing his signature in 2010 that left Cleanevent cleaners with below-award wages.

He further explained that it was not his “role to personally analyse” the “adequacy” of the Cleanevent deal.

Mr Howes was not called to give oral evidence or cross-examined on his statement.

In its findings published earlier this month, counsel for the commission queried whether Mr Howes’s was an “appropriate approach” and submitted that it “appears to be an abrogation of the responsibility that a national secretary should assume”.

“Cleanevent got precisely what it was looking for from the AWU when the MOU was executed: an agreement that avoided the employ­er’s responsibility to pay its employees, at minimum, at the relevant award,” counsel’s submissions state.

“Paul Howes should take respon­sibility for … failures in proper process.”

However, Mr Howes fired back that “the criticisms and aspersions made in the submissions of Counsel assisting constitute an abrogation of counsel’s duty to the Commissioner.”

Further defending his role in the Cleanevent deal, Mr Howes’s submissions stated that counsel failed to consider “the scope and burden of (Mr Howes’s) duties as National Secretary”.

Mr Howes, who is now a director at global consulting firm KPMG, said that it is “superficial and completely detached from the reality and true facts of operating a large national union like to AWU” to suggest the national secretary “should scrutinise the detail of all industrial instruments placed before him”.

“A national secretary who, in addition to a host of other functions, is required to sign hundreds of such instruments each year: a task which makes scrutiny of individual instruments impossible.”

“That is the very reason for the process established, of relying on staff with relevant expertise to provide advice.

“It is a process common in large organisations of all kinds,” the submissions add. “Reliance on such advice in these circumstances cannot be described as wrong or negligent.”

“These are matters upon which Mr Howes, if questioned, would have offered useful factual information”.

Mr Howes’s submission argued that “a failure to allow a person whose reputation may be affected from being heard” was a “blatant breach” of rules of procedural fairness and natural justice.