Scabs flown in to try to break McCain strike

More than 350 workers at the McCain Foods factory in Ballarat are striking. Their campaign of industrial action started early in September, after six months of negotiations over a new enterprise agreement failed to produce a satisfactory outcome.

The workers are members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union. They make instant dinners, frozen pizzas and frozen fries for McCain, which is McDonald’s Australia’s sole French fries supplier.

Management is pushing for a new agreement with terms that would reduce production costs so, the company claims, it can “remain competitive”. McCain has suggested that its workers are paid 60 percent more than others in the frozen food industry.

But the Ballarat plant is among the company’s most profitable. “You know when an EBA period is coming, management start crying poor and threatening to move the factory overseas”, said Phil (not his real name), a night shift worker with 20 years’ experience at McCain. “Happens every time.”

According to Phil, sentiment at the well-unionised site is clear: “Pretty much everyone voted to take whatever action the union thought was necessary”, he told Red Flag. To date, industrial action has consisted of weekly stoppages in which each factory division strikes for one or two days at a time.

Central to the dispute for the workforce is McCain’s use of cut-price contractors. There are fears that the company plans to replace permanent workers with contract workers. “We are determined to ensure that any contractors’ labour gets the same wages and conditions as every directly employed person at McCain, to take away the financial incentive to undercut our members”, explained AMWU organiser Angela McCarthy.

Workers at the Ballarat factory have a history of fighting when they come under attack and striking until they win. Jill (not her real name) recounted wildcat strikes that were called a few years ago to defend a number of sacked workers. “That’s just what we do: when someone gets the sack, we strike.” In 2011, when management tried to scrap rostered days off, hundreds of production workers walked out only to be ordered back by the Fair Work Australia. Gerry (not his real name), a production worker, points out that anti-strike laws haven’t changed much in the last 10 years. “WorkChoices still basically exists, even though we voted to get rid of that.”

After an on-site mass meeting voted unanimously to reject McCain’s latest proposal, the company put the agreement to a secret ballot anyway. Three-quarters of the workforce voted against the offer.

In a move designed to undermine the strike and restore disrupted production, McCain has flown nine scab workers to the Ballarat factory from one of its production facilities in New Zealand. The scabs are not union members, and the New Zealand union that covers their work has issued a statement condemning the workers for acting as strikebreakers. The dispute continues.