One of Victoria's most prominent union leaders has been hit with legal action over a two-week picket line blockading millions of dollars of pre-Christmas cargo on the Melbourne waterfront.
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The dockside picket line, which received a mass show of support from several unions on Friday, has been stopping freight trucks from accessing more than 1000 stranded shipping containers carrying Christmas retail goods, Christmas decorations, fresh food and medicine.
International stevedore Victoria International Container Terminal (VICT) has previously won orders in the state's Supreme Court for the maritime union to lift the illegal picket line.
However, the campaign has since been taken up by the wider union movement, which has continued manning the controversial blockade.
Luke Hilakari, secretary of peak state union body Victorian Trades Hall Council, is among the high-profile unionists supporting the action. He addressed the large-scale union rally at docks on Friday.
Trades Hall issued a statement on Monday saying Mr Hilakari had been served with legal documents at his family home over the weekend, adding that it was the first time that a Trades Hall secretary had been "directly targeted in such a hostile manner".
"This is a severe and unprecedented escalation by VICT, who have attempted to intimidate not just Trades Hall but all Australian working people through this extreme action," the statement said.
The legal action is the latest development in a bitter workplace dispute affecting the Port of Melbourne, the nation's busiest container port, following VICT's decision to stop giving casual shifts to a union member there.
The company says it stopped giving the man shifts because a security audit found him ineligible to work at the waterfront due to a previous criminal conviction.
Union officials say he was singled out because he had been involved in a drive among co-workers to join the maritime union.
Mr Hilakari has called on VICT to explain how it discovered his private address and why it served him at home on a Saturday afternoon rather than at his office at Trades Hall.
"It's outrageous," Mr Hilakari said. "If I had rocked up to the CEO's house with a petition, the police would have been called.
"These are bully-boy tactics, and they won't work on us."
VICT will apply on Monday to the Supreme Court to renew its injunction prohibiting the Maritime Union of Australia from being within 100 metres of the terminal's access gates. It will also seek an order to injunct Mr Hilakari.
"VICT is now seeking injunctions against others who have engaged in illegal picketing since December 1, against Luke Hilakari, as a representative of all persons present at the picket over the last week," a company spokesman said.
VICT is alleging in the Supreme Court that Mr Hilakari and other trade unionists have "wrongly and maliciously agreed to conspire and combine among themselves to injure VICT".
The picket line at the terminal has been roundly condemned by employer representatives in the freight and logistics industry, who say the effects of the union blockade at the busy, pre-Christmas time of the year were being felt right across the economy.
According to VICT, its stranded imports at the docks included EpiPens, frozen prawns and other seafood, toys, Christmas decorations and machinery parts. Stranded exports included frozen meat, chilled cheese, wine, fruit, cotton, clay, timber, lead, zinc and aluminium, hay, grain, wheat and milk products destined for China.
The company has threatened to seek damages of up to $100 million it says it stands to lose because of the ongoing union blockade.
