Labour hire firms targeted

LABOUR hire firm Tricord Personnel has been unsucces-sful in an attempt to stave off a Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union bid to force an enterprise order onto it.

Industry and legal experts say the decision is yet another attempt by unions to try and get better control over the labour hire sector.

Besides the CFMEU commis-sion win, other unions are seeking ways to try and union-ise the labour hire sector.

The industry’s concern is that unionisation will increase the costs smaller labour hire firms have to face and may make them unviable.

Tricord won the first round of the battle last year when the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission found that the order – which would be the same as the CFMEU’s enterprise bargaining agree-ment including a 36 hour week – did not apply to the company because the commission did not have the jurisdiction to enforce it.

Tricord operated a system of taking on workers as contractors similar to that used by fellow construction industry labour hire firm Troubleshooters.

The Troubleshooters system of taking on contractors and not employees was enshrined in the Odco High Court decision from the 1980s.

The union appealed the decision and the full bench found Tricord actually had an employer-employee relationship with the people it sent onto other people’s sites because it exerted a high degree of control over them on those sites.

That decision clears the way for the CFMEU to make another push to have the enterprise order imposed on the firm.

Tricord director Peter Wieske said the company had appoint-ed senior counsel and would decide, in the next two weeks, whether it would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

Mr Wieske branded the dec-ision as a political one rather than a legal one.

"Look at who’s in power and what they’ve done to the industrial relations system," he said.

CFMEU secretary Kevin Rey-nolds said the decision upheld the union’s argument that the Tricord workers were wage earners and not contractors.

"We’ll now be seeking an enter-prise order to make sure they pay the right wages and conditions," he said.

So what does the commis-sion’s change of heart over Tricord mean for labour hire firms?

Minter Ellison industrial relat-ions partner Andrew Burnett described the union’s win as significant and increased their power in dealing with labour hire firms.

"To me the implication of the decision is that it does allow unions to drag labour hire firms into enterprise orders or indust-rial agreements," he said.

Recruitment and Consulting Services Association WA president and Integrated group employee relations manager Stuart McLean said the dec-ision put further pressure on labour hire firms.

He said unions, emboldened by the change to WA’s industrial relations lawyers had been targeting the sector because of their opposition to casual workforces.

Besides the Tricord decision, labour hire firms are also facing attempts by the Australian Metal Workers Union to have a labour hire-specific award created in the WAIRC.

Mr McLean said the attempt to get a labour hire award up was designed to increase union-isation in the sector.

"If they can get the award up, they can use it to sell to the workers," he said.