Victoria’s construction union and an official have been slapped with $168,000 in fines after they were found to have bullied safety officials and police after shutting down a construction site.
The CFMEU was fined $150,000 and union official Paul Tzimas $18,000 today following a Federal Court appeal ruling over a dispute on Victoria’s West Gate Tunnel project in 2019 where safety officers and police were branded “corrupt” and a “disgrace”.
Tzimas and another CFMEU official on December 3, 2019 attended a construction site at the Melbourne tunnel project to conduct a union safety inspection on contractor John Holland’s worksite.
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Workers that night were lifting and installing five bridge beams on the northern side of an existing bridge when the two union officials arrived and issued onsite management with a health and safety breach notice.
They believed work to be performed that evening would be done unsafely and against health and safety regulations so the pair halted the works by standing on a scaffold deck refusing to move.
Over about six-and-a-half hours after they arrived, Tzimas and the other official interacted with WorkSafe Victoria inspector Quinton Drury.
Federal Court Justice John Snaden found interactions were unsavoury between the union officials and Drury, who had attended to determine whether their safety concerns were warranted and ultimately did not share the same opinions.
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During the interaction with the WorkSafe inspector, Tzimas made a number of inflammatory remarks, questioning Drury’s impartiality and suitability for the role, Justice Snaden said.
“If you want to be a lap dog to John Holland and to get the works done, without addressing the issues, that’s up to you,” Tzimas said to Drury.
He called Drury “corrupt” for not conducting an inspection before accusing him of “incompetence” and being a “disgrace”.
Victoria Police officers were later called to the site to ask the pair to leave and Justice Snaden said Tzimas redirected his fury towards them.
“(You are a) disgrace. Absolute disgrace,” Tzimas told the officers.
“You’re acting as a lap dog for John Hollands denying us our rights to represent our workers.”
The pair left after police ordered them to go but subsequently returned throughout the night to issue new safety notices.
In his judgment, Justice Snaden said the union officials had no justification to behave the way they did.
“By holding up the performance of work, and by refusing to engage in a meaningful way with management, Mr Drury or the police as to their concerns, the conduct in which Mr Tzimas … indulged bespoke a thuggish assertion of control over how the site should operate,” he said.
“They sought to appropriate unto themselves an authority that they plainly did not possess and, when challenged, their response was to bully their interlocutors with unwarranted insults and abuse.”
The case was first brought against the union in 2020 by the now defunct Australian Building and Construction Commissioner, and a judgment and penalties were imposed on the union in 2021.
The union appealed the judgment and the case was subsequently taken over by the Fair Work Ombudsman who said Tzimas acted in an improper manner on five occasions and the CFMEU was an accessory to his offending.
Allegations of widespread intimidation, bribery and criminal links were aired against the union’s Victorian and NSW construction divisions, leading to the Victorian and South Australian branches placed into administration and under national office control.
An independent administrator has been appointed by the federal government to oversee the union.
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