CFMEU over the past week.
(The nature of our business means we do not have any direct involvement with the CFMEU. Our subcontractors tend to be represented by other unions which are less militant. )
I'd heard countless anecdotes over the years about standover tactics, favoured contractors being pushed heavily, others being black banned, and many smaller builders simply avoiding growing to doing anything over 4 storeys with the threat of the CFMEU coming on site.
We all sort of knew what was going on but didn't really talk about it publicly.
The impacts of the behaviors now revealed across the incredible reporting by Nick McKenzie, David Marin-Guzman, Ben Schneiders at The Age and The Australian Financial Review have had, and will continue to have, enormous ramifications across the industry and the broader economy.
For instance, we now understand why major contracting firms kept bending to ever-growing demands on pay and conditions – well beyond what employees in other industries were achieving. Put simply, it was a combination of: ➡️ Fear (of losing out on work entirely); and ➡️ Lack of incentive (EBA costs just got passed into government contracts).
👷🏻♂️No EBA = goodbye business. EBA = money for jam.
Who ends up paying? The taxpayer, across infrastructure projects (all of which are $billions over budget) and homebuyers (e.g. those who might have wanted to buy, say, a family-sized apartment).
Everyone has been getting less and less for our collective dollars.
CFMEU involvement has been reported to add anywhere from 10-30% to overall building costs, and if they arrived after contracts were signed, it would send builders broke.
In practice, CFMEU-like pay rates and and to a large extent conditions also permeate into other sectors of the workforce as they became the new norm. Private sector construction firms have been decimated, demonstrated in the record insolvency numbers which continue to grow, because they can't get labour, or if they can, they can't afford to pay the rates they are demanding.
Like most I wonder how this story will continue unravel, and I question whether this is limited to the Victorian chapter (I doubt it)? e.g.
❓Do infrastructure projects get audited?
❓Does a version of the ABCC get reinstated?
❓Does the CFMEU get deregistered nationally?
❓Does anyone actually get charged with offenses?
What I know for certain is that the cost base now been baked in to the building system just pushes project feasibilities and #housing targets further away from being achievable.
🤔 Bringing it back to my passion, the only solution to deal with the #housingcrisis from here is to unlock housing supply that does not rely on the CFMEU's blessing to be delivered.