The rogues’ gallery behind Labor’s flagship ‘top’ deal for workers

It was touted as the deal that would stop “the race to the bottom”: Labor’s ambitious proposal to bring workers under one banner to bargain with multiple employers under the same conditions.

But a year after signing its new multi-employer bargaining agreement into law, the industry organisation behind the first deal with a union has become a rogues’ gallery of business owners facing claims of trading while insolvent, multimillion-dollar debts to the Tax Office and offensive social media content targeting gender-diverse people and migrants.

Championed by the Labor government for delivering “best practice standards” for employees, the HVAC Manufacturing and Installation Association became in 2024 the first industry body to sign a multi-employer bargaining agreement, after winning support from the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union.

However, more than a year after signing the agreement, the association has no office, no phone line and no functioning website as its members face growing scrutiny.

The association, which represents businesses in the air-conditioning and ductwork industries, was founded by seven ventilation heavyweights in December 2022, months after Labor proposed introducing laws that would facilitate collective employee bargaining across multiple businesses.

HVAC association director Darren Beecroft faces a debt of $530,000 to the Australian Taxation Office while calling for American-style immigration raids on Australian construction sites. Former HVAC association director Sergio Gonzalez owes creditors and the ATO more $2 million while amassing a personal fortune to fund a professional football field in his front yard. The liquidated air-conditioning business of HVAC association founder Gavin Ohlback and his partner Scott Smith, which once sponsored a car racing team, owes $1.8 million to the Tax Office.

The multi-employer bargaining laws were designed to bring companies with a single interest together to guarantee workers’ conditions and prevent opportunistic rivals from undercutting pay and conditions.

Former workplace minister Tony Burke said the laws would start a “race to improve job security”, the day after the manufacturers’ union and HVAC association signed the agreement in March last year.

“What we have now means the best employers don’t get punished for being the best employers,” he said.

But of the dozen companies that have signed up to the deal inked by the association with the support of the AMWU and Labor, at least half are facing questions about their business practices, including one company, Fredon Air, run by a former bankrupt, and another, Emax Air, that is a defendant in criminal proceedings.

Ohlback, a HVAC association director, owes creditors $613,138 according to the February liquidators’ report for his former company, Precision Air Services. His business partner, Smith, who continued as a director after Ohlback resigned in January 2023, owes $1.2 million.

Liquidator Michael Jones found the company may have been trading while insolvent since June 30, 2022, due to “significant losses from government projects” and the “prolonged impact of COVID-19″.

But in April that year, Precision Air Services was plastered all over Gavin Ohlback Racing’s car in the Australian Midget Championship, also known as speedcar, as it chased the national speedway championship.

“Whilst the team spends plenty of time in the shed making sure the cars fast, they also ensure the car is presented in the best possible fashion,” Ohlback wrote on Facebook in February 2022.

The Ohlbacks sold their six-bedroom home in Kenthurst, north-west Sydney, in 2016 for $4 million. Then they bought the house next door for $2.05 million and a five-bedroom home in Cattai, also in Sydney’s north-west, for $2.9 million. In 2021, they submitted plans for a $96,000 extension of the Cattai home, including a new garage and a pool and spa, complete with rugby league goal posts out front.

By March 2024, Precision Air Services had assets of $75 in its bank, according to Jones, after it paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to Ohlback and Smith. The pair then set up another company, S&A Solutions, which signed on to the AMWU deal. Ohlback did not respond to requests for comment.

“I may be forced to commence legal actions for the recovery of those amounts,” Jones said in his report to creditors in February.

Fellow HVAC association founder Sergio Gonzalez built a full-size enclosed futsal pitch with artificial turf in his front yard in south-west Sydney suburb Denham Court, while his Sublime air-conditioning companies have gone through three liquidations and accrued debts to the ATO and creditors of more than $2 million.

But liquidators said recouping those debts would be a challenge because Gonzalez has no real property holdings to his name. Property records show the six-bedroom mansion in Denham Court, which has undergone extensive renovations in recent years, is registered in his wife’s name, Romina Gonzalez.

Liquidators said they were investigating whether there had been a “potential phoenix transaction” and whether Gonzalez had breached corporate law by incurring debts while trading insolvent, failing to keep financial records and not providing the company’s books to liquidators.

Gonzalez fell out with other HVAC association founders in October after accusing them of doing a deal with the AMWU “behind closed doors”. He resigned as a director of the association and transferred his workers to an agreement with the Plumbers Union.

The split sparked a series of claims and counterclaims after the HVAC association accused the Plumbers Union of intimidating builders into joining their enterprise bargaining agreement. The Plumbers Union accused the HVAC association of attempting to rope in other firms into the multi-employer deal that would have no power over the negotiations.

Gonzalez told The Australian Financial Review in October that he had not seen the HVAC deal before he was asked to sign on. “They said we’re going to do it, and you’re going to be part of it.”

Gonzalez, 45, has won major contracts to work on the redevelopment of the University of Technology Sydney and Parramatta Square while developing his links with NSW Labor. Fair Trading Minister Anoulack Chanthivong attended a ducting installation with Gonzalez at Westmead Health Precinct in May. Gonzalez, who did not respond to requests for comment, previously ran labour hire company Sublime Onsite, which also went into liquidation in 2018.

Beecroft, another HVAC association director, has failed multiple payment plans with the ATO and faces a claim of trading while insolvent for at least five years. His former company, Traminer Industries, owed $158,155 to the ATO when it was liquidated in 2019. His most recent company, Traminer Industries (NSW), owed $593,000 to the Tax Office, according to a restructuring proposal submitted to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in July.

Beecroft said the debts had all been sorted through a new small business payment plan. “I’m all good,” he said.

“I pay every one of my guys exactly what the agreement says.”

In June, Beecroft suggested immigration officials should raid Australian construction sites after US President Donald Trump ordered immigration officials to target Mexican and South American workers on construction sites.

“Maybe we need to do this in Australian work sites,” he said on Facebook alongside a video of migrant workers being arrested.

Beecroft has also accused gender diverse people of having a mental illness, suggested climate change was a scam, labelled activist Greta Thunberg a “crisis actor” and re-posted a meme accusing “woke parents” of cutting their kids’ “nuts off”.

Beecroft said he stood by his personal views “100 per cent”.

The HVAC association’s spokesman and leader, Mimmo Scavera, said in October that the association was planning to “rope in” a further six companies in the sector into the AMWU deal despite resistance from the Plumbers Union and the Australian Industry Group. Scavera praised the deal for allowing the companies to pool resources among their 600 employees to work on multiple sites under the same conditions.

But Scavera has also faced difficulties after being accused by a former employee in the Fair Work Commission in 2016 of wage underpayment, bullying and unfair termination of his employment. Scavera denied the allegations. The commission recommended that the employee take his case to the Fair Work Ombudsman.

The deal has also been under scrutiny from critics, including the Business Council of Australia, which claimed in a submission to parliament in November that workers under the HVAC multi-employer agreement would be $1.27 worse off per hour compared to the Plumbers Union deal with single employers by 2027. The AMWU said last year the deal would increase the annual pay of air-conditioning installation workers from $102,000 to $133,000 over the life of the agreement.

Innes Willox, the Australian Industry Group’s chief executive, said a group of companies could use multi-employer bargaining to push smaller competitors out of the market who could not compete for employees.

“The great fear has always been that multi-party bargaining can be used for essentially anticompetitive purposes, to drive out competition within a marketplace, which then drives up rates in the end for consumers,” he said.

“The flip side of the coin is that it has the potential to drive businesses to the wall. It takes away the ability of businesses to manage their individual business in the way and form that they see is the best fit for their business.”

Willox said he was surprised that the first multi-employer deal that was reached was with a relatively obscure air-conditioning association. Scores of multi-employer agreements have since been approved by the Fair Work Commission, including in the early childhood and healthcare sectors.

“All I can say is, we advised [the government] that this could go pear-shaped pretty quickly,” he said. “We advised them at the time that it could be very easily used as an anticompetitive instrument by some businesses who had ulterior motives.”

The AMWU and Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth declined to comment.

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