One of the many frauds Michael Williamson carried on at the HSU was bogus payments to a business called CANME.
The payments amounted to over $300,000 in 4 years.
In reality, these were just payments to his wife, Julie. When questioned, Williamson claimed that they related to work Julie Williamson had performed pulling apart records held in storage so that they could be scanned for a proposed union history.
Julie Williamson claimed that she spent 60 hours a week doing this and the job was “very dirty”. She added “I felt I should have been charging $200 per hour as the work was downright disgustingly filthy”.
Yes, it must have been awful.
In the agreed statement of fact Michael Williamson gave to police before being convicted and jailed he accepted that this work was not done by his wife and that CANME was not involved in any sorting or scanning of union files.
There were always rumours that Guilfoyle’s wife, Cindy, (and Mark Cooper’s wife) were being paid by City Tatts, allegedly for work done at home. This was in the distant past, maybe 15 years ago or more, so we don’t have definite facts to hand.
Still, we’ll see what we can find out.
It has been clear for a long time that there is something very wrong with the City Tatts wage bill. It’s just too high. Even allowing for the inflated salaries we know about (Tony Guilfoyle, Mark Cooper, Jan Ellks etc) it’s still too high, by at least half a million.
And payroll has always been a very touchy subject inside City Tatts.
A few years ago, a personnel manager accidentally got into the files showing the wages paid to Guilfoyle’s inner circle. She was sacked the following day.
Save City Tatts Committee
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