By Michael Bachelard
AUSTRALIA'S most dysfunctional union has hit another low, with revelations of a 2001 claim of sexual harassment against one of the men seeking to become its leader.
Doug Byron is one of three candidates running for the position of secretary of the bitterly divided Victorian branch of the Health Services Union, which was forced to an election after a bruising factional fight.
Pauline Fegan, union chief at the time of the complaint.
Mr Byron is running the campaign under the slogan "Moving Forward" and is attempting to distance himself from the past infighting.
But The Sunday Age has seen Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal documents from 2001 in which Mr Byron was accused by a union employee of making lewd sexual comments to her, as a result of which she says she suffered psychological damage.
Mr Byron yesterday denied the allegations, saying they were directed mainly towards another employee of the union, and that he (Mr Byron) had simply been caught up in it.
"I was named but there was never anything substantiated," he said.
The union's former assistant secretary, Robert McCubbin, told The Sunday Age the case had cost the union $18,000 to settle, plus at least a further $12,000 in legal fees.
Mr Byron said he did not know of any financial settlement.
The union's president at the time, Pauline Fegan, denied the case had been heard by VCAT, and said no financial payout was made.
"I'd be very, very careful about putting anything in about Doug," Ms Fegan said.
The alleged victim, who was an industrial officer at the union, said the harassment began after she told colleagues in 2000 that she was a lesbian. In one of the instances quoted, she said Mr Byron and another senior union official had phoned her from Mildura and, among other sexually explicit comments, said, "we've got ourselves a hooker … you should be up here".
In the complaint, filed in VCAT's anti-discrimination list, she refers to other sexually explicit messages on her voicemail.
The claim said the union was also at fault because Ms Fegan, the then president of the branch, had failed to investigate and had told others about the confidential complaint.
The union's lawyers conceded Mr Byron and the other man "did occasionally make comments of a sexual nature", but said they were in the context of friendship.
The woman had "consented to and enjoyed" any such conversations, the union's defence said.
Mr Byron said yesterday, "I completely deny" taking part in any sexual harassment. "I got dragged into it … I knew it was settled but I didn't know there was any financial settlement."
He said Mr McCubbin had been out of the union for more than five years, and that Mr McCubbin was supporting the candidacy of one of Mr Byron's political rivals, Diana Asmar.
Mr Byron's campaign to be secretary of the union is being supported by Labor senator Stephen Conroy, and run by a senior Australian Labor Party staffer, George Droutsas, who is facing criminal charges of electoral fraud relating to a council election.
The union has been riven in recent months over allegations of paying for prostitutes on union credit cards, and of rorting union tendering arrangements.