Companies urged to ignore union

The push from the Master Builders Association of Victoria could lead to renewed industrial strife between builders and the militant Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union.

It follows a similar move by Telstra, which recently called off talks with unions and moved to offer non-union agreements to staff. Unions will today request to the Industrial Relations Commission that Telstra employees get a vote on whether they want to participate in a union collective agreement.

"Telstra workers should be given the choice to have their unions negotiate a collective agreement rather than have the company's managers push a non-negotiable job contract upon them," ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence said.

A Telstra spokesman said the unions were "punching at shadows" in response to Telstra's "great offer".

About 5000 building workers met at Festival Hall yesterday and agreed on a union pay deal that awarded increases of 15% over three years including a 6% rise in the first year. The deal is to cover more than 20,000 employees.

But Master Builders industrial relations manager Lawrie Cross said the union agreement was inflexible on issues such as rostered days off or cashing out annual leave.

He said the presence of industry watchdog the Australian Building and Construction Commission was giving employers more confidence to offer non-union deals.

The building industry is dominated by union collective agreements, but Mr Cross expects up to 15% of agreements to move to non-union deals. CFMEU assistant state secretary Bill Oliver expected the non-union offers to be ignored.

"I'm fairly confident our agreement will be successful," he said. "We expect all the major constructors to fall in line."