9 hours ago
A pledge to “exclude” the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union from Queensland road projects by state and federal LNP leaders has been criticised as illegal by industrial relations experts.
On Thursday, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, told the Courier Mail that he would “condition” future federal funding for the Bruce Highway “to exclude CFMEU involvement”.
“This will mean a 30% or more efficiency,” Dutton said, referencing a claimed difference in wages for workers covered by the union’s enterprise bargaining agreements compared with those on the basic award.
It was unclear exactly how the union exclusion would be implemented – and Dutton’s office did not respond to requests for clarification.
The University of Queensland law professor Graeme Orr said it would be “tantamount to a secondary boycott to deny companies the right to tender simply because they had a relationship with a union”.
He said there were “fundamental rights only parliament could take away; for example the right to have a union represent you not only as an individual but also an agreement”.
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The Griffith University law professor John Flood told AAP the plan was “crude, probably illegal and highly unethical”.
The Fair Work Act prohibits discriminating against a person because they take part in an industrial activity or are a member of a union. Section 354 of the act prohibits discriminating against an employer because its employees are covered or not covered by an “an enterprise agreement that does, or does not cover … a particular employee organisation”.
The Queensland Council of Unions general secretary, Jacqueline King, said prohibiting companies with a CFMEU EBA from making bids would be a “breach of the freedom of association laws under the Fair Work Act”.
She said the only way to realise a 30% improvement on project budgets would be to slash wages by that amount.
The LNP premier, David Crisafulli, threw his support behind Dutton’s idea, saying it was possible to exclude the CFMEU from projects.
“The CFMEU have no place – with their behaviour – on Queensland job sites,” he said.
“When we negotiate agreements, the new government will not be negotiating with the CFMEU, so we are very, very amenable with what Mr Dutton said.”
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The state government plans to establish a productivity commission, which will be tasked with inquiring into productivity in the construction industry. Crisafulli said other unions would be consulted on the body, but not the CFMEU, the largest union representing construction workers.
Crisafulli clarified that he did not intend to ban people from work sites because of their membership in the union.
The CFMEU national secretary, Zach Smith, accused Dutton of being “anti-union and anti-worker”.
“Dutton appears to be willing to corrupt the tender process to make sure non-union contractors are awarded the job. This is illegal and dangerous. Excluding workers from employment on the basis of their union membership is also illegal,” he said.
The union is now under administration, after Labor and the LNP teamed up to pass legislation in response to reporting that the organisation had been infiltrated by bikies. The federal opposition floated the idea of deregistering the union entirely before voting for the laws.
Echoing a commitment earlier in the week by the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, Dutton also promised on Thursday to spend $7.2bn on the Bruce Highway.
