Imagine it: McDonalds at Centennial Park; modern high-rise at The Rocks; a “privatised” harbour foreshore lined by high-rise apartments, no Finger Wharf at Wolloomolloo, Newcastle’s historic East End demolished, Wollongong’s majestic Regent Theatre no more.

That's what the Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong we live in would look like now, if not for the CFMEU and its predecessor unions’ use of Green Bans.

Today, June 16, the CFMEU marks the 40^th anniversary of the first green ban. On that day Jack Mundey, then NSW secretary of the Builders Labourers’ Federation (BLF), joined forces with the FEDFA and a group of conservative Hunters Hill housewives to save the last patch of bushland on the Parramatta River.

The win at what is known as Kelly’s Bush was to be the first of many victories for the union.

During the 1970s, the BLF, under the leadership of Mundey, Joe Owens and the late Bob Pringle, with the support of other unions, imposed more than 42 green bans to protect heritage buildings, parks, bushland and even historical suburbs in Sydney.

The most high profile of the battles was to save The Rocks. The BLF banned its members from working in The Rocks, effectively stopping its development.

But the battle came to a head when a developer using non-union labour broke the ban by starting demolition of old garages in Playfair St in October 1973.

“We stopped work on all of Sydney’s building sites and marched on The Rocks,” recalls Mundey.

Arrests, media coverage and government and developer outcry followed, but the public was on the side of the workers.

"Without Jack Mundey and his intervention, The Rocks would have looked much the same as the Sydney central business district, generally high-rise modern development with individual older buildings interspersed," the National Trust wrote in a submission supporting the recently created Jack Mundey Place in The Rocks.

For Mundey and his comrades, the use of the green ban was a natural extension of workers’ rights.

“It’s not much use us getting great wages and conditions if the world we build chokes us to death,” Mundey said in a 1972 interview.

A continuing proud tradition

In the 1990s green bans re-emerged in NSW under the leadership of CFMEU Secretary Andrew Ferguson and President Peter McClelland.

In the early 1990s the CFMEU imposed a ban on the demolition of Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo, which lasted for 2.5 years and eventually saved the wharf. In Erskineville green bans saved scarce green space from being developed and is now commemorated as Green Ban Park. At Pyrmont, children splash in a wondrous waterpark playground built on land that, save for a green ban, would now be privatised harbour foreshore.

Peter McClelland says groups that seek the union’s help in saving their urban environments do not often realise the cost to the workers involved.

“When we place green bans, we are sometimes acting contrary to our members’ best interests in terms of securing work and during John Howard’s government, workers faced huge fines if they took industrial action,” he says.

Some victories took time to achieve. In Newcastle a ban was placed in 1973 on demolition in the historic East End and foreshore. Fourteen years later the world’s longest green ban ended with a State government announcement that the area would be saved.

CFMEU members can be rightly proud to be part of the green-ban tradition, says NSW State Secretary Mal Tulloch.

“Cities are often full of monuments to important ‘people’,” says Tulloch. “In Sydney the heritage we have saved is a monument to the power of the working classes and our gift to our children’s future.”

CFMEU NSW will hold a number of ceremonial events on June 16 to commemorate the anniversary.

Download the poster for the 40th Anniversary: Building Workers Saved our Heritage.

Photos from Anniversary Events:

1. Jack Mundey, with CFMEU NSW Secretary Mal Tulloch and workers from the Watpac construction site at former Carlton Brewery.

2. Jack Mundey speaks to workers about the Green Bans.

More photos in Galleries/Events