Building union organisers in Canberra were required to sign up 125 new members a year, a senior Construction, Forestry, Mining and Electrical Union official told the trade union Royal Commission on Friday.
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"We [do] have a quota," ACT CFMEU branch secretary, Jason O'Mara, said.
"We'd like them [the organisers] to retain … 500 members each and get another 125 new ones [a year] if they could."
Mr O'Mara said quotas varied from year to year, depending on the state of the industry, and that recruitment was a major part of each organiser's job.
He said 10 new members a month was not excessive and the CFMEU would like to see organisers get more than that.
The targets were not set in stone, nobody had ever been sacked for not reaching them and he did not believe organisers felt under pressure to engage in inappropriate conduct to meet them.
Mr O'Mara denied "feigning shock and outrage" about corruption allegations and said the union did not have a "code of silence" on criminal matters.
Adam Morison, acting for two Canberra builders and an ACT Master Builders Association executive, put it to Mr O'Mara, corruption was hushed up "so as not to tarnish the reputation of the union".
Mr Morison: "Then, if it looks like they're [corrupt union officials] going to sink like Fihi [Kivalu] does, you cut them loose, don't you?"
Mr O'Mara said this was not so: "There is no feigning shock and outrage about these allegations [against Kivalu]," he said.
Mr Morison: "[It's] safety first, who cares about a bit of corruption here and there? You don't care about the worker, you care about your power and position."
Mr O'Mara: "That is totally incorrect."
Halafihi Kivalu, who quit as an ACT CFMEU organiser last year and was then given a redundancy payment, was charged with blackmail after admitting, at hearings in July, he received more than $100,000 from builders. Mr Kivalu has pleaded not guilty.
The commission heard a secretly recorded phone conversation between ACT CFMEU organiser Johnny Lomax and a Canberra builder whose name was suppressed on Friday. It took place at 7.33am on May 22.
Mr Lomax, who has also been charged with blackmail over a separate matter to Mr Kivalu and who has pleaded not guilty, told the builder he was with Mr O'Mara.
He said the union's management was concerned over the low number of CFMEU members at the builder's company and that there would be consequences if this didn't change.
"I've got Jason here mate," Mr Lomax said. "They want you to come up and have a meeting ASAP regarding membership and stuff like that. My bosses are very upset and I can't control that. We'll be delivering some action unless we get this meeting sorted out straight away."
The builder asked: "What do you mean, some action?"
Mr Lomax said:"I don't know what sort of action we're going to take mate, but one would be my suggestion of ripping up your EBA."
The builder said: "Does that mean we can pay our workers what we want after?"
Mr Lomax said: "F---, no … but you won't be doing f---ing any, without the EBA you won't be doing any work on commercial sites."
Counsel assisting the commission, Jeremy Stoljar said Mr O'Mara believed it was appropriate to rip up a company's enterprise agreement, effectively stopping them from working on commercial jobs in the ACT, if they didn't come up with more members. This was whether the workers wanted to join or not.
Mr O'Mara said: "I believe people working under the EBAs should be members. We were trying to get a meeting so we could talk to the boys about it.
"There's a number of companies that do work in Canberra without [union] agreements."
