Golden Circle – Giving workers the rough end of the pineapple
Workers at Heinz’s Golden Circle factory in Mill Park, a suburb in Melbourne’s north, have been in a pitched battle with the US-owned canning and fruit juice company.
The workers – members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) – began an indefinite strike on 20 February in response to the factory’s imminent closure and treatment of outgoing employees.
The plant’s 100 workers were dealt a severe blow in October, when Heinz management told workers – some of whom have given 25 years of service – that the Golden Circle operations would be relocated to Queensland.
Tony, one of the AMWU members working at the site, along with others on the 24-hour picket line, were irate at Heinz’s treatment of them. “They have decided that they are not making enough profit, so they are going to move things to Queensland to increase their profits, and kill our livelihoods.”
The workers are resigned to the fact that the factory is in its twilight, but mounted a fight for a fair redundancy package that sufficiently recognises their service.
Fifty workers have already been notified that their labour will no longer be required from mid-March. The remaining 50 face an uncertain future in a period of rising casualisation. This amounts to another 100 permanent manufacturing jobs lost in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, an area devastated by the manufacturing downturn in Victoria.
Adding insult to injury, Heinz Golden Circle has vindictively refused to release prior to closure those soon to be displaced workers who have found new jobs. “A lot of people have found work, and Heinz are refusing to let them go, so those members have actually lost jobs in the process”, Tony said.
A key claim for picketers was a demand that the company provide an additional payment to workers who engage in training and education to assist their transition into alternative employment. Pathetically, Heinz offered to place the workers in a government-funded program. “It was basically token gestures”, Tony said of the company’s offer.
In the midst of the manufacturing crisis, growing rates of casualisation and insecure forms of employment – affecting an estimated 40 percent of Australian workers – the Golden Circle workers fear for their prospects once the Mill Park operation closes its doors.
Tragically, they have lost two of their comrades since the October announcement that production would cease. The late AMWU members’ workmates said both passed away due to stress-related illnesses. The Mill Park workers continued the fight for justice in their memory; they all deserved better.
Workers returned to the factory on 28 February after securing a new one-year deal. The agreement will also bind any company that operates out of the Mill Park plant after Heinz vacates in April.
The workers won a three percent wage increase backdated to 10 January. The increase will also apply to redundancy payments of four weeks’ pay for each year of service. Importantly, the agreement provides that casual workers will also receive redundancy payments of one week’s wage for each year of service, calculated from the first day of their employment. Originally, the company planned to pay casual workers a redundancy benefit only after five years’ service.
