Fair Work finds abattoir vote not fair

Workers at the Teys Australia abattoir in Beenleigh, Queensland, have had a significant victory in their long battle for a decent enterprise agreement with one of the largest meat processors in the country.

On 4 March the Fair Work Commission upheld the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union’s challenge to a dodgy agreement that the company claimed was approved by workers at the abattoir in August. The commission has ruled that the company took a mistaken approach to determining which employees would be covered by the agreement and were therefore eligible to vote on it. In layman’s terms, the commission found that the company allowed stooges not covered by the agreement to vote it up – by a margin of eight votes.

In September 2013 Red Flag reported on the dispute, which was then centred on the fact that the workers at the abattoir had not had a pay rise since November 2011. At the expiry of their old agreement, they started a campaign to win a new deal with the same conditions and a guaranteed pay rise.

The company had other plans and drew up its own enterprise agreement, which included an effective pay cut and increased workload. Workers at the site held a number of stoppages and voted by a show of hands not to put the company agreement to a secret ballot.

The company didn’t shift and put its agreement to a secret ballot in which “trainee supervisors” not covered by the agreement voted to get it over the line.

Now that the Fair Work Commission has knocked out the company’s agreement, the union says that workers, who have had to work under the company’s agreement for months, are keener than ever to win a better deal. “In practical terms, the company is very alive to the fact that its employees have had six months of working to its new agreement and not many like it”, said Matt Journeaux, AMIEU assistant branch secretary. “The company will resist a new ballot at any cost due to this dissatisfaction. The union is hoping for a democratic outcome whereby workers who aren’t working to the terms of a proposed agreement won’t be able to be stacked in for a rigged vote.”

Workers at Teys have experienced first hand the impact of the bosses’ productivity agenda – a non-union agreement illegally voted up, leaving many of them with less pay and more work. But this time the courtroom chips have fallen the workers’ way, and their campaign continues.