Exactly one month before Christmas, three construction workers were killed in two separate workplace accidents in Perth. 

Joe McDermott, 24, and Gerry Bradley, 27, were crushed by a falling concrete panel. They were standing in what should have been an exclusion zone as the panels were lifted off a truck. The Jaxon site at Bennett Street where they were working had been inspected and cleared by WorkSafe the day before.

Later the same day Benjamin White, a scaffolder at Alcoa, fell to his death in Kwinana.

Following these incidents, CFMEU (Western Australia) secretary Mick Buchan released a statement condemning the cavalier attitude of builders to safety:

“The CFMEU has submitted more complaints of suspected safety breaches to WorkSafe in regard to Jaxon sites than any other builder in town. Jaxon has denied the CFMEU its legal ‘right of entry’ on numerous occasions across their nine development sites in Perth. There are currently four prosecutions against Jaxon before the court.

“Because these are the things that we find every day on sites we visit as part of our job. These are the things that cause arguments with employers who are always in a rush to get things done, always in a rush to cut corners in order to make a bigger profit.

“That’s what we were trying to do when we were knocked back 16 times from legally entering Jaxon’s building sites. Instead we get labelled troublemakers and law breakers.

“Our job is to fight every day to protect the lives of people whose friends and families expect them home at the end of each day. If that’s a crime, then charge me and throw me in jail.”

In the pursuit of profits, builders routinely flout the kinds of safety rules that almost certainly would have ensured that these young workers made it home at the end of the day.

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Teri Gibson is a CFMEU (WA) member.