A disregard for the rule of law is endemic within the building and construction industry, according to the findings of the Building and Construction Industry Royal Commission report.
Minister for Workplace Relations Tony Abbott released the findings of the 23 volume report in parliament during parliamentary sessions on March 25 and 26.
However Abbott did not make public the final volume containing information on 31 individuals who may be subject to criminal prosecution. This information will instead go directly to the relevant authorities for criminal investigation.
Key findings in the report are:
392 separate instances of unlawful conduct by individuals, unions and employers
25 different types of unlawful conduct
90 types of inappropriate conduct.
“This is largely a lawless industry operating on the principle of might is right and subject to commercial and sometimes physical intimidation and blackmail,” Abbott said in parliament.
Unlawful conduct was found to be worst in Victoria and Western Australia, with 230 cases reported in WA and 58 in Victoria. Problems listed in the report include widespread disregard for, and breaches of, the enterprise bargaining provisions of the Work Relations Act; inappropriate industrial pressure; widespread use of occupational health and safety as an industrial tool; unlawful strikes and threat of strikes; threatening conduct and intimidation ; and disregard for contractual obligations.
But opposition industrial relations spokesman Robert McClelland accused the report of bias against employees and unions as only 13 per cent of unlawful conduct cases in it relate to employers.
Chief executive of Master Builders Australia (MBA), Wilhelm Harnisch said the report simply reflects the facts. “That 87 per cent of the findings are against workers and unionists does not in any way demonstrate any bias by the Cole Commission. It reflects the situation as it is. The unions had the opportunity to appear before the Commission but chose not to on many occasions, including the occupational health and safety workshop which they boycotted,” he said.
Harnisch said the actions of a few individuals should not be seen as a slur on the entire industry and that the vast majority of the building industry operates ethically. He urged all political parties to embrace workplace reform following the recommendations in the report, which are to:
introduce industry specific legislation, the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act;
create national taskforce, the Australian Building Construction Commission;
establish an Office of the Commissioner for Occupational Health and Safety in the Building and Construction Industry; and
strengthen the Building and Construction Industry National Code of Practice.
“The way the workplace laws operate now, protected industrial action is just too easy to invoke. It is especially harmful for smaller employers to be subjected to campaigns of organised industrial action by large unions that can send them to the wall,” Harnisch said.
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), accused within the report of attempting to regulate the industry, rejected the report as “no more than a list of technical industrial breaches” and said it failed to address issues such as tax evasion, phoenix companies and safety levels. The Australian Council of Trades Union called the report “a politically one-sided failure”.
National executive director of the Civil Contractors Federation, Doug Williams said the Commission’s findings come as no surprise. Williams emphasised the need to differentiate between the civil and building industry sectors and the different work practices under which they operate.
“The majority of the report’s findings directly relate to building works on sites …Civil contracting firms directly employ 55,000 staff throughout Australia and invest significant capital in heavy machinery. As such these firms operate under a different set of risk management practices to head contractors or building sub-contractors. Being at the end of the supply chain, civil contractors bear the brunt of pre-agreements made by head contractors.”
“The consequences of the findings will have a commercial impact on civil contractors,” Williams said.
He said the CCF welcomes the reform recommendations, which he believes are in the right direction and looks forward to their implementation. “The test is in the implementation.”