Who'll stand up to Reynolds?

It has attracted little media attention in the eastern states, but in Labor Party and construction industry circles – especially in Western Australia – they have been watching like hawks as the story about the aborted challenge to militant construction union boss Kevin Reynolds unfolded this week.

On Sunday it emerged that Kevin Reynolds, the state secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Engineering Union (CFMEU) in Western Australia, was going face a challenge to his 34-year rule from 37-year-old Darren Kavanagh, the union's occupational health and safety officer, at elections due in October.

But by Wednesday, Kavanagh, who went to ground when the story emerged, was retreating faster than Napoleon from Moscow, saying he had no intention of running for the top job.

What he realised, of course, was the brutal reality of CFMEU elections, WA style; the Reynolds-McDonald machine – Joe McDonald is the union's state assistant secretary who was expelled from the Labor Party on the cusp of last year's federal election – had loyal organisers on the ground to secure the majority of the vote among the union's 9,000 members.

The ramifications of Kavanagh, a moderate, winning office, would have been enormous.

To begin with, it would have brought some industrial sanity to the state's building industry; Reynolds' modus operandi is to pressure employers into industrial submission in a style reminiscent of the former Victorian boss of the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF), the late Norm Gallagher. Reynolds is a carry-over of yesteryear's industrial tactics that says all bosses are bastards – except, of course, those bosses who do his bidding.

Kavanagh's ascent to office also would have isolated, to some degree, the militant Victorian office of the CFMEU and given the more pragmatic NSW branch greater authority in the running of the union at a federal level.

The Victorian branch, notorious for the industrial mayhem is has wreaked in the past, has been much more circumspect since the Howard Government established the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner (ABCC) in October 2005. As it happens, the ABCC also has curbed the wilful activities of the CFMEU in WA.

But following Kavanagh's decision not to contest the state secretary's position – it'll be interesting to see how long he will remain the health and safety officer after crossing Reynolds – the status quo remains. But it shouldn't.

It's not only employers that have come to see Reynolds as a real problem – the Labor Party and the working people it claims to represent are increasingly arriving at the same view. Which is why it's instructive to remember Gallagher's legacy. In the 1980s, the BLF was running amok in Victoria; a favourite tactic was the disrupted concrete pour. The cost to the state, industry and employees was incalculable. But eventually a State Labor Government said enough was enough and ordered a police raid on the BLF's Melbourne offices in October 1987.

The Victorian Minister for Labor at the time, Steve Crabb, was resolute in his bid to curb the union's power, willing to incur the wrath of other unions and Labor supporters – it was colourfully described at the time by left-wing Labor MP George Crawford as "a fascist police raid” – but wiser elements in the Labor movement (especially at the ACTU) quietly lauded his actions.

Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter should take note. Now is the time to take on the CFMEU head-on. Kavanagh's failed bid for the top job virtually rules out any possibility of internal reform; Reynolds and McDonald, have a vice-like grip on the union.

Although it won't be easy, Carpenter would do well to remind himself of Reynolds' close links to disgraced former Labor Premier Brian Burke, as well as the controversy surrounding Reynolds' wife, Shelley Archer (a former Labor member of the WA Upper House, she now sits there as an independent), who has been accused of feeding Burke confidential government information. These factors alone should steel Carpenter's nerve.

One more point. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has said he will retain the ABCC till 2010, much to the chagrin of the CFMEU. If Reynolds & Co remain in power, that's a deadline that quickly needs extending.