Fair Work Ombudsman pursues union over unlawful strike

The Fair Work Ombudsman has launched legal action in the Federal Magistrates Court against the Australian Workers Union over unlawful strike action and an attempt to coerce an employer into paying strike pay.

But the case has sparked an extraordinary reaction from AWU national secretary Paul Howes, who slammed the FWO as toothless and claimed the AWU would prosecute IR law breaches on its own.

The action, announced this morning by the FWO, will see the watchdog pursue the AWU, AWU NSW, AWU NSW Assistant Secretary Andrew Gillespie and AWU Port Kembla branch President Andrew Gorman over a strike at Boral Resource’s Dunmore quarry in February last year.

According to the FWO, the industrial action allegedly concerned the union’s objection to Boral supervisors carrying out the work of Boral employees.

The FWO claims the industrial action was unlawful because it was conducted before the Boral employees’ collective agreement expired.

The FWO also alleges that “Gillespie, on behalf of the AWU and AWU NSW, breached workplace laws by trying to coerce Boral into paying employees for time they spent engaging in a lawful strike at the Dunmore quarry on June 30, 2009”.

The Ombudsman also says Gorman and Gillespie breached workplace laws relating to how they entered and conducted themselves at the Dunmore quarry.

The AWU and AWU NSW face maximum fines of $33,000 per breach, while Mr Gillespie and Mr Gorman face maximum fines of $6,600 per breach.

But AWU national secretary Paul Howe is unimpressed by the action.

“Every step of the way, they have frustrated us to the point where we have just decided we’ll no longer deal with that office, we’ll just go out and prosecute on our own,” he told The Australian.

“They’re a bunch of employer patsies. At the end of the day, they’re an invention of the Howard Government.”

No court date for the case has been given.