When four construction managers were summoned to the CFMEU’s office in Elizabeth Street on Tuesday, June 7, 2022, they were being ordered to kiss the ring.
asserted
they → summon → ring
Joe Aygur, for one, didn’t like it.
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Aygur → like → it
“I’ve never done that before,” said the manager at the Rail Network Alliance, a consortium of companies working on the Gap Road level crossing removal project in Sunbury.
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manager → do → Sunbury
He knew that if he agreed to drive across town that afternoon, to walk into the CFMEU office in Melbourne’s CBD and be led upstairs to a meeting room by union officials, he would be acceding to all their demands.
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he → know → demands
He knew it would add cost to the project and his consortium would cede control over crucial parts of its operation.
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consortium → know → operation
Aygur also knew he had no choice.
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he → know → choice
Because, as he told the Big Build royal commission under compulsion on Tuesday, a minister of the Crown in a Labor state government had effectively ordered him to do it through a proxy – with menaces.
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minister → tell → menaces
Aygur told the commission that Peter Wilkinson, a senior government official from Rail Projects Victoria, had indicated the builders must attend the meeting.
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builders → tell → meeting
In Agyur’s telling, Wilkinson said, “there was a view in government that if we could not work through our industrial relations matters, that we would not win further work in Victoria”.
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we → say → Victoria
Where did that view come from, counsel assisting the royal commission, Chris Young, KC, asked.
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counsel → come → commission
“The joint venture was actively pricing the Melbourne Airport railway,” Aygur said.
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Aygur → price → railway
Evidence does not yet reveal who the minister in question was.
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minister → reveal → question
The then transport minister (later premier) was Jacinta Allan – who has denied a similar allegation in the past and said in a statement on Tuesday night that she would answer “whatever questions the royal commission has for her about these allegations”.
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commission → deny → allegations
Either way, this is the first evidence, on the record, from a man on the ground at the Gap Road site, that the Victorian Labor government was endorsing this union, its thuggish pressure campaign and the added costs that would inevitably be incurred.
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that → endorse → union
The CFMEU had raised “industrial relations issues” on the site and the government wanted them fixed.
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them → raise → site
“How would you fix IR issues, or fix IR activity on the site, other than giving in to whatever the CFMEU was asking for?” Young asked Aygur.
“That was the only approach.”
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That → fix → whatever
Inside the CFMEU’s meeting room, things went pretty much as Aygur had expected.
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Aygur → go → room
Paul Tzimas, a CFMEU organiser, complained that the companies were “misbehaving” by insisting on people working “over long weekends … keeping him and his organisers away from family gatherings, birthdays”.
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people → complain → gatherings
Inevitably, the builders agreed to pay for two full-time union-selected health and safety reps on the site and to change labour hire and traffic management contractors forthwith, even though, as Aygur said, “you’re introducing a lot of risk to workers by making the change in a high-pressure period of work”.
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you → agree → work
They kissed the ring.
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They → kiss → ring
Another witness, Steve Testolin, described senior union boss Joe Myles at one point leaving the meeting, then returning and raising the question of “future projects”.
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witness → describe → projects
“If we aligned ourselves with the union, that there’d be a positive outcome and that we’d be looked after.”
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we → align → union
Any particular projects discussed?
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projects → discuss → ?
“Airport rail … we’d be the preferred contractors,” Testolin said.
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Testolin → prefer → ?
Yet in Victoria in 2022, it appears, the CFMEU’s Myles was purporting to run the joint.
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Myles → appear → joint
On the evidence of just one day’s hearing with live witnesses, the state government was apparently endorsing union reps bursting unlawfully onto a site and shutting it down on spurious allegations it was unsafe.
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it → endorse → allegations
The witnesses are alleging the government was happy to reward tactics which endangered the completion date of a project that led to thousands of rail passengers sitting on buses waiting for a bridge to be built to carry them.
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bridge → allege → them
And the union was using this government support to feather its own bed, and those of its cronies, with contracts, and new jobs for mates.
It certainly was not acting on behalf of the workers.
Crane driver Glenn Tyrrell told the commission on Tuesday morning that under the deal struck in the union office on that June afternoon, he had been forced to spend $1200 a year on union membership (federal law says you cannot be compelled to join a union).
He was also forced to change employers to the union-approved labour hire firm, and to give up his role as health and safety rep to an unelected, full-time salaried union appointee who was not required to do any work on site.
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who → use → site
Tyrell’s pay rate changed not a jot.
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rate → change → ?
Someone else got the money because, as is already on the record, the cost to taxpayers skyrocketed.
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cost → get → taxpayers
And as soon as the union’s associates got their hands in the till, their attention to safety slithered back to normal levels on the Gap Road site.
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attention → get → site
The royal commission will hear more evidence on Wednesday.
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commission → hear → Wednesday
The Aporia
