| Firms 'paid maritime union for peace' |
Construction companies paid the militant Maritime Union of Australia up to $1 million to buy industrial peace in the offshore oil and gas industry, the royal commission investigating trade union corruption has been told.
Evidence yesterday revealed four companies made a series of payments to the union's WA branch and associated bodies, with some of the money in one case being deducted from workers' wage rises.
The union's WA secretary and rising Labor Left powerbroker Christy Cain played a key role in negotiating the payments.
Counsel assisting the inquiry Jeremy Stoljar said numerous companies had paid "substantial sums of money" to the MUA and related entities.
"Many of these payments were made by the companies effectively in order to buy, or maintain, industrial peace with the MUA and its members," he said.
"The net effect of these types of arrangements is to add to the bottom line of those projects."
Among the payments was $1 million from Italian subcontractor Saipem in 2008 to the Maritime Employees Training Limited, a registered training organisation set up by the MUA.
The commission was told Saipem wanted to bring in foreign tugs and crews because of a shortage of local workers to build a platform and pipeline west of Darwin. The union was "fiercely opposed" to this and Mr Cain allegedly threatened to use the union's "muscle" to cause trouble at Saipem's operations.
Saipem's project manager at the time Fabio Di Giorgi gave evidence the payment to METL was "a gesture of the good faith towards the maritime employees" and to "calm them down". Emails tendered as evidence showed one executive from Italian energy giant ENI, which owns the gas field, felt the payment "sounds a little too much like a bribe" but Mr Di Giorgi told the commission this was not the case.
The commission was told another pipe-laying company, Sapura, got the union's approval in 2012 to use foreign crews on the Gorgon gas project after it agreed to finance the training for four trainees at a cost of $77,000 each through METL and also paid $50,000 to sponsor an MUA conference.
Dredging companies Dredging International and Van Oord paid $200,000 and $50,000 respectively to sponsor conferences. Van Oord donated $30,000 to the Federal election campaign of union deputy secretary Adrian Evans, who failed to win the seat of Hasluck.
In his evidence, Mr Cain said while talks with Saipem may have been heated, he never threatened to disrupt the project.
He defended the payments, arguing they were part of a "social compact" between industry and the union to train Australian workers.
The MUA's barrister Steven Crawshaw said there was not a "skerrick of evidence" that bribes had been paid.
"Procuring industrial peace does not, we suggest, set out any case for there being a bribe, a secret commission or an unlawful payment or benefit," he said.
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