The Victoria police have deployed hundreds of officers to the Grocon Myer Emporium construction site in Melbourne to secure the area occupied by members of the union. With their presence, the police safety secretly escorted 35 Grocon non-union employees inside the $250-million site.

The police initially tried to bus in the non-union workers, but the employees refused to board the bus that would attempt to break past the blockade.

The move in happened at around 3 a.m. or hours after talks between Grocon and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union collapsed on Thursday at Fair Work Australia. It is an indicator that the police would attempt to break further the blockade in a bid to resume construction work at the site.

Because of the protest, now on its tenth day, traffic along Swanston Street, Lonsdale Street and Little Bourke Street has been diverted.

With the assistance from the police and if the weather would be clear, Grocon Chief Executive Daniel Grollo said work at the site would resume Friday and continue on Saturday. He disclosed that many Grocon employees did not report for work due to safety concerns since the clash between protesters and police earlier this week.

While Grocon suffered financial losses for the protests over safety issues raised by the construction workers, nearby food establishments are benefitting from the blockade with more orders from the protesting union members.

A manager of a Pie Face, a 24-hour convenience store, said that on Friday morning it served 450 coffees and sold all of its sausage rolls to the striking workers, prompting the store to add three more staff to their morning shift.

The blockade has been declared illegal by the Victoria Supreme Court, but over 150,000 construction workers threatened to join the Grocon union members in a sympathy strike following the collapse of talks at the FWA. The 150,000 are members of four unions affiliated with the Building Industry Group.

Union leader initially agreed to the proposal by FWA President for a two-week moratorium and were prepared to lift the picket for further talks, but Mr Grollo refused more talks unless the illegal blockades are removed first.

"I told the FWA meeting what we have said from the outset. We are happy to meet with the CFMEU leadership and hear their issues - as we do in the normal course of our business - but not while they are illegally blockading our worksites and intimidating our people, contractors and their families," The Australian Financial Review quoted Mr Grollo.

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