The Federal Government is expected to point to the findings of the Trade Union Royal Commission, particularly with respect to Cbus, when it seeks to renew its pursuit of changes to default superannuation fund arrangements.
The Trade Union Royal Commission’s final report, released by the Government late last year, has pointed to circumstances in which it said the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) had used Cbus’ future default fund status to pressure the superannuation fund.
The final report suggested the big bulding industry fund was able to “exert influence over Cbus of a more general kind” and pointed to events in 2012 and 2013 when the CFMEU was involved in a bitter feud with a building company called Grocon.
It quoted Cbus chief executive, David Atkin as saying that the union became ‘unhappy’ that Cbus had provided a building contract to Grocon and that, subsequently, the Victorian building unions then undertook a public tender’ for a default superannuation fund in enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) and required Cbus to go through a competitive tender process.
The report said it was the only time such a process had occurred in the whole of Atkin’s eight year tenure at Cbus.
“According to David Atkin, if Cbus lost its default provider status with the CFMEU something like 15 per cent to 20 per cent of Cbus’ revenues would be lost,” the report said. “Fortunately for Cbus, the CFMEU subsequently decided to retain Cbus as the default fund.”
