Despite continuing rank-and-file anger among CFMEU members, there is now widespread resignation about the Administration of the union imposed by the Labor government.
Following the High Court’s decision upholding Administration in June, key supporters of the removed officials are no longer willing to fight it. A proposed wildcat strike of at least five sites in Melbourne in late June was hosed down by Victorian organisers days before it was due to happen.
Some are still hoping that legal action can frustrate the Administrator’s plans. Demoted ACT branch Secretary Michael Hiscox has launched another court case to try to reverse Administration’s removal of him from his position.
Court documents have revealed the thuggish language used by Michael Flinn, the Administrator’s Chief of Staff, to Hiscox after he pushed back on Admin’s demand for more money from the ACT branch.
Flinn allegedly told Hiscox that you are “bringing on yourself consequences that you can’t even imagine”, that “you are playing with fire” and asked why he was “determined to run a campaign of opposition that will only end badly for you?”
In late August, Admin released a financial declaration for the year ending 31 March 2025.
It revealed that Administration paid $1.1 million to KordaMentha accountants to “forensically” examine the CFMEU’s accounts.
Legal fees increased by over six times from $266,246 to $1,669,664.
Some of these lawyers’ fees are being used to fight a Victorian woman organiser’s unfair dismissal case, after her sacking by Administration last November.
Admin’s employee Zach Smith, the National Secretary and the Victorian Executive Officer, is being paid for his “services”, as the document puts it, $364,825 a year.
He is among the leading CFMEU figures and Administration employees who are arguing that all that’s possible is to “do our work as a union” and re-emerge when Administration ends.
This is at least two more years and possible four years away. All that time Administration will hamstring the CFMEU from organising as a union to defend safety and conditions.
Already, on some Victorian sites, word is circulating that the tame-cat AWU is attempting to poach traffic control work from the CFMEU, with the Administration willing to hand over members.
Administration wants to turn the CFMEU into a compliant union that accepts all the anti-strike laws and allows the bosses to run all over it.
Members need to start organising at a rank-and-file level independently of the Administration to stop the bosses taking advantage and resist the attacks inside the union.
By Tom Orsag
