BY RUSSELL PICKERING
PERTH — The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has written to Western Australian police minister Michelle Roberts seeking information about special training being given to six senior regional police officers who instruct cops called out to industrial disputes on construction sites.
This development follows in the wake of the acquittal in March of CFMEU construction division officials Joe McDonald and Graham Pallot of charges of resisting arrest and refusing to leave a premises which arose from an incident at an East Perth construction site in November 2001.
The judge who presided over the case added to the embarrassment of the WA police at the time by saying the case would not have gotten to court if the cops had followed the law.
According to the August 1 West Australian, the state Department of Consumer and Employment Protection had confirmed senior regional officers "had been given training that included the boundaries between industrial and criminal law".
The revelation has fuelled speculation that a special police hit-squad is being trained to curtail the presence of CFMEU officials on construction sites.
The revelation comes at a time when a challenge to the right- of-entry industrial law is being made by WA building contractor Gerry Hannsen. To prevent CFMEU officials coming onto his Westralian building site in East Perth, Hanssen employed a security firm, Westline Security, to staff the site's gates. As a result, Hanssen was charged by the Building Industry and Special Projects Inspectorate with violating the right-of-entry law.
Unfazed, Hanssen views his case as a potential test for the building industry and sees himself as a crusader for construction bosses. Refusing to sign an enterprise agreement with the CFMEU, Hanssen employs a non-union work force and blames the union for his bankruptcy in 1992.
Meanwhile, the winter edition of the CFMEU's journal, Construction Worker, has published the photographs of two recruits to federal workplace relations minister Tony Abbott's building industry task force. Ex-cops Michael Connely and Marcus Clark are paid by the Howard government to spy on unionists. The accompanying article tells union members: "If you see one of these geezers snooping around your building site call the union immediately."
From Green Left Weekly, August 20, 2003.
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