Pete, yu seem very anti union. Wood you prefer to see the return of slavery ?

WOS will suffice from now on or better still refrain from any comment at all. No point if all I get is newscorpse articles in reply.

The Australian can reveal that the reduction of employee conditions under a 1998 enterprise agreement signed by Mr Shorten’s AWU Victoria and Cleanevent cost 5000-odd workers as much as $400 million, substantially more than previously thought.

The royal commission has in recent weeks contacted former Cleanevent senior executive Steve Hunter to provide evidence.

Mr Hunter has said the 1998 sweetheart enterprise bargaining agreement left workers far worse off and had been denied to Cleanevent’s rivals, placing them at a disadvantage. He said AWU ­Victoria had good reason to be friendly with Cleanevent, given Cleanevent had in place in the late 1990s and early 2000s an unusual arrangement, which artificially bolstered union memberships.

Mr Hunter has said Cleanevent staff were automatically signed up as AWU members on employment.

That arrangement meant “up to 90 per cent” of Cleanevent’s workers were union members at the time.

Mr Hunter became particularly aggrieved with the sweetheart Cleanevent deal after leaving the firm in 2003 .

Mr Hunter set up his own cleaning business at that time but despite several years of negotiations, AWU Victoria refused to provide his company an enterprise bargaining agreement similar to Cleanevent’s. 

“Cleanevent was paying $18 an hour for casuals while we were paying $28-$29 an hour to staff — straight away, you are $10 an hour behind,” Mr Hunter has told The Australian. “With an event like the Big Day Out you’re looking at several thousand hours; it doesn’t take long before you are out of the equation.”

Cleanevent’s former major shareholder, Melbourne’s wealthy Liberman family, is also understood to have been approached by the commission for information regarding the company.

The Liberman family and Justin Liberman, who was involved with the Cleanevent investment, have declined to comment when contacted by The Australian. In 1998, while Mr Shorten was AWU Victoria state secretary and Cleanevent’s union representative, an EBA was entered, which reversed worker-friendly deals, removing night-shift penalties and weekend loadings.

The deal was highly beneficial for Cleanevent because the bulk of cleaning work was conducted outside office hours, and during weekends, cleaning up after events.

Australian