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Issue No. 129 | 22 March 2002 |
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Not So Happy Campers
Interview: Pulling the Pin International: At the Crossroads Unions: A Case Of Lost Identity History: Rocking the Foundations Industrial: Rocky Road Economics: Cracking a Coldie Poetry: The Right Was Wrong Satire: Heffernan�s Evidence Conclusive: Proves He's An Idiot Review: Upstairs, Downstairs
The Soapbox The Locker Room Postcard Cole-Watch Week in Review
 Letter to Howard #1Letter to Howard #2Letter to Howard #3Jump Before You're Pushed
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Industrial Rocky RoadBy Jim Marr
*********** One wife and mother has risked even more. She told Workers Online, on condition of anonymity, that her family was splintering. "We haven't been paid for four months and it's put terrible pressure on us all. My husband has gone away to find work so we can look after the kids and keep up payments on the house" she explained. "If we go back to work, I hope he will come home but, honestly, I don't know." Packer's company is backing a four-month lockout with an application to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commissionj to set aside the workers' enterprise agreement and have them revert to the Federal Meat Award. For skilled boners like Gary Donald that would slice more than $230 out of a before- tax weekly pay packet of around $800. Donald, who started at Rockhampton's Lake's Creek abattoir in 1969, had his Falcon station wagon re-possessed last week. It has only made him more determined to stare down the polo-playing billionaire and his representatives. "We are sticking up for ourselves to make sure they can't do this to anyone else," Donald says. "Make no mistake, every company is looking at this dispute. If they can knock us back to the award safety net they will do the same right across the industry. "We're pretty staunch but some of us are doing it tough. I'm not the only one who has lost his car and some others have lost their homes. "If Packer showed his face around here I reckon someone would probably cut out his kidney." Workers give a variety of reasons why they think Consolidated Meat, which also operates plants at Innisvail and Katherine, has singled them out for massive clawbacks. Mismanagement is a recurring theme and there is talk of lessening capacity to drive down inflated cattle prices. The end-of-year shutdown is a time when meat companies traditionally test out workers who have just survived Christmas. Consolidated Meat Group spent millions of dollars on introducing new technology to its plant, during 2000, only to run into a series of expensive teething problems. It had been negotiating a new enterprise agreement with the Meatworkers Union since the last document expired in December, 1999. Worker reps say those talks were characterised by constantly changing employer claims. Frustrated site official, Les Cook, got a reputation for greeting the u-turns by asking - are you serious or delirious? Still, on January 9, the company was ringing workers at homes as far away as Sydney and asking them to report for a January 14 start to the new season. Instead, they kept the gates closed. Knife hand Cheryl Peacock says it's the "blatant dishonesty" that annoys her most. "They knew what they were going to do long before we finished work but they rung people up and strung them along," she says. For their part, workers have told Consolidated Meat Group they are prepared to return on 1999 terms, without improvements in wages or conditions. They have agreed to lift production and extend working hours but they won't cop a safety-net contract gutted by Peter Reith's 20 allowable matters. Community support is helping keep their heads up. Understanding the significance of the fight, Queensland members of the AMWU Mining Division have levied themselves $10 a week; local councilors and MPs have spoken up on their behalf and Rockhampton business have come to the party, making donations and stretching credit facilities. Three weeks ago more than 3000 Rockhampton people demonstrated solidarity in a march across the town's old bridge.
Cook describes community support as "magnificent". Despite repossessions, foreclosure notices, and some workers seeking alternative employment mass meetings are still drawing upwards of 1000 workers. A welfare committee is operating and women support one another at coffee-fueled gatherings. Packer, meanwhile has opened a new 5000-head feedlot in Indonesia. "We've got to stick it out," Cook says. "If we are forced back on the award it would mean more industrial action to get anything like reasonable conditions because of the clauses the Government has forced out. "Processing companies around the country are watching this situation. It would be a terrible precedent for a lot of other people." The Rockhampton dispute hasn't got a lot of traction in the southern media but it is big news in Central Queensland - for very good reason.
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