Vic: CFMEU - Lend Lease agreement

Building giant Lend Lease faces being banned from billions of dollars of Victorian government work after signing a new deal with the construction union.

Lend Lease's four-year workplace agreement with the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has been described as being in defiance of the Baillieu government prohibition of normal negotiated deals in the building industry.

The Baillieu government has said it will ban builders from bidding for government-funded work if they sign deals with unions that do not comply with its new code.

The new rules, which took effect from July, apply to deals signed in the private and public sectors, appear to be deliberately designed to undermine a number of provisions of the Fair Work Act.

Baillieu's ideologically driven code even prohibits the genrations long union cultural practice of flying Eureka flags on cranes in Victoria, or wearing union badges or union stickers on hard hats.

The new CFMEU - Lend Lease deal simply ignores the more extreme rantings of Baillieu's anti-union code.

The Baillieu code, based on discredited Howard government anti-union provisions and massaged by ideologues who set up the ABCC kangaroo court, aims to enforce workplace deals that place restrictions on normal union activities.

As the Sydney Morning Herald puts it:

"Neither Lend Lease nor the CFMEU have done anything wrong under federal law - where workplace relations are now regulated.

But by trying to change industry behaviour through a state code, Baillieu will need to show if his attack on unions and costs is real or just rhetoric. If one more big builder cuts a union-friendly deal it is hard to see the code surviving".