In person, in writing and in a weekly newsletter: WorkSafe details CFMEU warnings to minister

Detailed summary

The claims in a submission to the royal commission cast further doubt on the government’s claims it was unaware of the CFMEU’s conduct on major projects.

The workplace safety watchdog repeatedly warned the state government about the CFMEU’s escalating use of spurious danger claims to disrupt major projects, particularly the $10 billion West Gate Tunnel.

WorkSafe Victoria’s chief health and safety officer Sam Jenkin’s claims in his submission to the royal commission into the construction industry cast fresh doubt on the government’s insistence it was unaware of the CFMEU’s conduct prior to this masthead’s Building Bad investigation in mid-2024.

Jenkin described regular high-level meetings with then-minister Ingrid Stitt and her staff as one of the ways WorkSafe communicated the CFMEU’s disruption of major projects using unfounded safety claims – particularly on the West Gate Tunnel, which was beset by delays and cost blowouts.

“These issues were recorded within WorkSafe in weekly email updates and highlighted in written and oral briefings to the minister’s office, including by the CEO personally,” he said.

Jenkin’s evidence follows the release of multiple briefing notes from senior bureaucrats seeking to warn then-minister in charge of the major projects, Jacinta Allan, of costly and significant problems caused by the CFMEU.

Asked by the commission to reflect on events in 2021 and 2022, Jenkin said WorkSafe had regularly observed CFMEU officials entering projects over matters that “appeared not to relate to genuine safety concerns” as part of the industrial battle it was fighting with the Australian Workers Union.

“So far as ‘patterns’ are concerned, although it is highly unlikely that WorkSafe could have proved such matters in a court, CFMEU aligned [officials] may have been raising safety concerns to advance industrial and other interests, including with employers and during a demarcation dispute with a rival union, the Australian Workers’ Union,” he said.

“As a general rule … they arose earlier, more consistently and were most pronounced at the West Gate Tunnel Project.”

On several occasions, he said, WorkSafe suggested…

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