Western Australia’s peak civil construction industry body has urged the State Government to shelve its WA Best Practice Industry Conditions (BPIC) policy rather than risk handing the CFMEU huge power on major infrastructure projects.
The Civil Contractors Federation WA (CCF WA) says the CFMEU WA branch may not be crooked and corrupt but it certainly can't be trusted with the excessive power being handed to it by WA BPIC.
CCF WA CEO Andy Graham said WA BPIC stipulated mandatory pay and conditions on infrastructure projects, and did not even go close to meeting the "genuine agreement" test for major project agreements laid down by Federal Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke this week.
"If BPIC didn't pass the sniff test last week, it's well and truly on the nose this week," Mr Graham said. "Minister Burke's investigators need to take a close look at this arrangement.
“Contractors and subcontractors on the Tonkin Highway Extension project have no choice but to comply with WA BPIC – they were not even consulted, let alone reached genuine agreement.
“Clearly though, the CFMEU was consulted, because the WA BPIC document is effectively a CFMEU pattern employment agreement.
"Mandating BPIC on the Tonkin Highway Extension is the first step to all government projects being 100 per cent union sites, no ticket no start, like we see on high rise building sites in the city, where as long as you join the union you're safe.
"We don't want that toxic culture in our sector. Companies and employees are of course always welcome to work with the union, but it should be their choice, not a government policy.
“CCF WA believes no government should be forcing law-abiding businesses, with existing Fair Work-endorsed enterprise agreements in place, to tear those agreements up and comply with a set of union-dictated terms and rates.
Mr Graham said the WA BPIC agreement gave the CFMEU excessive rights to interfere in business operations and included onerous consultation requirements which far exceeded those in the Fair Work Act.
“One BPIC clause requires businesses to give the CFMEU detailed advice at least 28 days before engaging any company to do any work, whether or not this will have any effect at all on employees. It’s not clear why the union needs all that information, nor what it will do with the information.
"That's just one example -- the CFMEU's fingerprints are all over BPIC."
Mr Graham said CCF WA freely acknowledged the CFMEU WA was better behaved than other states. "But they're still the CFMEU -- they still have a long history of using threats and intimidation to get their way. Their slogan is ‘whatever it takes’, and everyone in the industry knows that's a motto that some of their organisers still proudly live by.
“That's why there has to be a balance. But WA BPIC tips the scales way too far.
“We don’t even have to imagine what our project sites might look like when BPIC gives the CFMEU free rein to do 'whatever it takes' in WA. Just look over east at what’s happening in Queensland and Victoria under similar so-called best practice union-friendly policies.
“Construction costs have shot up and productivity has declined – why would we risk that in WA?
“Three years of BPIC in Queensland has emboldened the CFMEU to launch increasingly bitter and personal attacks on businesses and employees – why would we risk the psychosocial health of Western Australians?
“Weighing this all up, how can we even contemplate risking all of the destructive effects of BPIC – the added cost of infrastructure and housing, the inevitable industrial unrest and project delays, the stress on local businesses and workforces – just to satisfy a union’s expansion plans?”
