Construction manager tells Victorian inquiry of meeting with union officials where he asked them to ‘cut the bullshit’ before receiving ultimatum
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A construction manager told union officials to “cut the bullshit” before they issued demands that had to be met in order for work to resume on a Victorian government infrastructure project, the Big Build royal commission has heard.
The royal commission into the integrity of major public and civil infrastructure construction projects in Victoria for the first time heard witness evidence in a public hearing on Tuesday.
Among them were construction managers involved in government projects, including one who said public servants warned that, if a dispute with the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union wasn’t resolved, their consortium’s involvement in other jobs would be affected.
Another, John Holland general superintendent Steve Testolin, told the commission of how he attended a 6 June 2022 meeting, alongside three of his colleagues and CFMEU officials Joe Myles and Paul Tzimas, at the union’s headquarters.
At the time, the union was involved in a level crossing removal project at Gap Road in Sunbury, north of Melbourne, which is the focus of the commission’s November hearings.
It is considered an example of how the CFMEU put pressure on work to stop on a government project, and whether it was used as leverage so the union could be granted what it wished in order for work to continue.
During what was supposed to be non-stop construction of a rail bridge over a 30-day period, work was stopped on the Gap Road project by the union, which the commission previously heard had officials unlawfully entering the site and standing in front of equipment.
Testolin said his company felt it had no choice but to deal directly with the union because they had no support from authorities – including police, WorkSafe and the state government, which was the client on the project.
“I knew that eventually we would have to concede … because we weren’t being supported by authorities,” he told the commission.
“We were pretty much being left standing alone.”
He said “we knew were going in there to agree with a list of demands” made by Myles and Tzimas at the meeting in the CFMEU’s headquarters.
Testolin told the commission that Myles eventually said: “Enough with the small talk, what do youse want”. He said he then responded: “How bout you cut the bullshit and tell me what you want?”
What followed, he said, were demands that union health and safety representatives be appointed on site, and that union-affiliated labour hire and traffic management companies replace the firms already being used.
Myles made clear that, should John Holland “align ourselves” with the union, they would be looked at favourably for upcoming projects, including the airport rail link, Testolin told the commission.
Once the demands were met, work resumed at the site the next day.
The number of safety concern notices issued by the union went from 12 a day to one for the rest of the project throughout 2022, he told the commission.
Joe Aygur, the general manager of the Rail Network Alliance involved in the project’s delivery, told the commission that he had been warned by government that if the union issues were not resolved, the firm would struggle to win other similar contracts.
He said Damian Brizzi and Peter Wilkinson, both public servants within the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority, had imparted the view that the firm needed to work through the issues with the union.
“The intent of the words was that there was view in government that if we could not work through our industrial relations matters … we would not win further work in Victoria,” Aygur said.
“That view about the need to work with the union was coming from the office of the minister for transport infrastructure,” Aygar said he was told by Wilkinson.
Aygur said that the CFMEU action during the 30-day period, known as an occupation, came when “we’re most vulnerable”.
He said this was because the costs incurred could include penalties of $750,000 a day for any delay in the occupation, extra costs of rail replacement buses of about $500,000 a day, and additional labour costs of about $3m a day.
The commission also heard on Tuesday from a worker on the Gap Road site, who said he was forced to sign up to the CFMEU and a new labour hire company within days of the meeting between the union and John Holland.
Glenn Tyrell, a crane operator and health and safety officer on the project, told the commission that he and 15 other workers were given an ultimatum by a union official and site management about a week after the work stoppage.
Tyrell said he was told to sign with a different labour hire company, BK Labour Hire, and to join the CMFEU if he wanted to continue working on the site.
He told Tim Jefferie, junior counsel assisting the commission, there was no practical reason to change labour hire groups on the project. He said the new contracts had the same award rates as the previous labour hire group.
Another worker on the project, Robert Van Den Tol, told the commission he thought the union “were on a mission” because the project was being run by “the last crew in Melbourne” that the CFMEU had not infiltrated.
Van Den Tol, a former John Holland supervisor who has since retired, said that while he had received training about how to deal with safety concerns raised by the union, “I don’t think any training would cover it because they did what they wanted to do.”
He said that the conduct of the union in late May and early June 2022 – when they routinely interrupted work and arrived on site unannounced, at one point occupying the site until almost 2am – was “definitely” unusual.
“They were on a mission for something,” he said.
He assumed this was to install a CFMEU health and safety representative.
The hearings before commissioner Christopher Kourakis will continue on Wednesday.
