Perth Voice Interactive

AFTER decades of private ownership the old Trades Hall is back in union hands, with the CFMEU shifting its HQ to the restored 1911 building.

The Beaufort Street hall was an early office for many trade unions and used to house the WA branch of the Labor party.

In 1985 it was sold to Delaney Galleries and it stayed in private hands for nearly 30 years. In 1997 it was carved up as offices, housing several tentants.

When the CFMEU was looking to move out of its Royal Street digs the place happened to come on the market, and the members decided to pick it up and start renovations with design studio JUO.

They pulled up modern floor coverings to find where the old walls were, knocked out partitions, and discovered three old, intact fireplaces hidden behind plasterwork.

As part of the renos they’ve recovered a few lost historic items to put on display, including the trowel that prime minister Andrew Fisher used to lay the foundation stone. It turned up at an auction house in Melbourne a few years back and wound up with former Labor MLC John Cowdell, who returned it to the CFMEU.

They also found the old Trades Hall clock in the nearby Court Wine Bar (once a notorious Labor hangout), though no-one knows how it ended up there.

The union has also installed a new version of the old Robbie Burns poem that was inscribed above the main entry and read: “Be workmen true, to workmen still, among yourself united, for only by the workman’s hands will workmen’s wrongs be righted.”

The CFMEU has been in the largely renovated building a few months now rounding off the rough edges, but it’ll be officially opened this Sunday by national secretary Michael O’Connor.

by DAVID BELL