Canberra's largest construction union has signed up 50 new members in the past fortnight because building workers fear their rights are under threat from the trade union royal commission.
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ACT Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union secretary Dean Hall said an unintended consequence of the government's attack on the union movement was the politicisation of the workforce.
"Workers are smart enough to realise if [Prime Minister Tony] Abbott is going to these lengths to attack the union movement [through the royal commission] it is because unions are doing good for their members," he said.
He is outraged by the commission's ongoing postponement of appearances by himself and other ACT unionists to respond to allegations made against them when it sat in Canberra for three weeks in July.
"Much of what has been said [about ACT CFMEU officials] is double and triple hearsay, inflammatory and defamatory," he said.
"If it wasn't for the fact it was under commission privilege people in this town would be being sued senseless."
Mr Hall has been accused of having Milin Builders sacked from the IQ Apartments project in 2012, helping browbeat employers into signing enterprise agreements and using verbal and physical intimidation to make a WorkSafe ACT inspector stop a concrete pour on a building site.
Although the allegations were raised on July 20 and July 21 he will now not get his day on the stand until the first week in September.
Mr Hall said 10 of the 12 ACT CFMEU office staff were originally told they would be appearing on summons at the third week of the Canberra hearings beginning on July 27.
When it took too long to deal with the other witnesses, they were told this wasn't going to happen and they would be called to Sydney to testify during the last week of August.
Mr Hall said he had now been told this had been postponed to the first week in September "at the earliest", more than six weeks after the original allegations had been made.
A commission spokesman broadly confirmed this chain of events and said in an ideal world the CFMEU staff would have appeared next week.
"Unfortunately, the ACTU application arose earlier this week and that has meant we have had to defer the hearings next week," the spokesman said on Friday.
"We now intend to deal with the ACT witnesses in the week commencing 31 August. We don't accept that there is any procedural unfairness arising from a short delay. We [do] regret the inconvenience to the ACT witnesses."
Mr Hall said the chopping and changing had left people's personal lives in chaos and created confusion about whether or not the branch would be able to operate during whatever week CFMEU staff finally do appear.
Accommodation booked for next week will now have to be rescheduled.
"One of our staff members, who has been summonsed to appear while on maternity leave, has a baby she is breast feeding as well as a toddler and another child in kindergarten she is trying to look after," Mr Hall said.
"There is no way this can be considered natural justice or procedural fairness.
"Tony's tradies are actually quite upset with Tony. We are seeing people putting their hands up to campaign against the China Free Trade Agreement in numbers I've never seen before.
"These guys aren't dumb, they realise this [letting less qualified foreign tradespeople work in Australia] will cost them their jobs."
Canberra's CFMEU branch is planning a mass meeting of building workers in late October ahead of the roll-over of many enterprise agreements in 2016.
"We will be pushing hard to improve conditions for our members," Mr Hall said. "You can take it from us we will be using lawful industrial action to make it happen if that is the will of the membership."
