It prevents employers from adopting such clauses if they want to be eligible to win lucrative construction contracts to build roads, tunnels, bridges or hospitals on offer from the federal government or which receive federal funding. Flying flags is banned under the government's building code. Credit:Eddie Jim Employer groups have blasted the union for "reneging" on conditions enshrined in hundreds of its agreements committing the parties to varying clauses to ensure compliance with the new code. "In industrial relations, a deal is a deal," said Stephen Smith, of the Australian Industry Group. "How can any employers have confidence in reaching agreements with the CFMEU if the union does not honour the agreements that it enters into?"

It is estimated there are more than 3000 non-compliant agreements with contractors across the country, including tier-one construction giants that build most of the nation's public infrastructure. Building industry watchdog director Nigel Hadgkiss says the ABCC was assessing more than 300 agreements every month. Credit:Simon Schluter But the union has decided it is not prepared to surrender conditions and rewrite agreements that had been struck lawfully, and has condemned the ABCC code as an "attack" on the rights of workers. Appearing before a Senate committee last week, Australian Building and Construction Commissioner Nigel Hadgkiss said his office had streamlined the process for assessing whether hundreds of workplace agreements were compliant with the new code. He said the agency was assessing more than 300 agreements every month, "which should enable us to meet industry demands for assessments, particularly those involved in tender processes".​

He told the Senate committee that he had already written to two very large contractors advising them that their deals breached the code. The agency told the Senate there were 97 expression of interest or tender processes under way that were likely to be covered by the code. Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said she was confident there would be enough builders with code-compliant workplace agreements to bid for federal contracts, even if the CFMEU continued to "hold their own members' jobs hostage" and refuse to renegotiate deals with builders such as Lendlease and Probuild. Under the new rules, builders will be able to win federal work until September without changing current non-compliant workplace agreements, so long as they strike a new compliant deal specifically covering the contracted federal project. Loading

But from September 1, all builders need to have code-compliant enterprise agreements to be able to win Commonwealth contracts. ABCC officials told the committee that "many companies" worked under construction industry awards rather then enterprise bargaining agreements, which would be compliant with the new code.