According to a recent report, the Glass Manufacturers“ Union in Australia is seeking a hearing in the Federal Court to stop ACI from locking out 83 workers at its glass-moulding plant.
And the texti…
According to a recent report, the Glass Manufacturers“ Union in Australia is seeking a hearing in the Federal Court to stop ACI from locking out 83 workers at its glass-moulding plant. And the textiles union has condemned a Coburg company, Austrim Textiles, for sacking 26 workers just before Christmas. ACI recently locked workers out of its Box Hill plant after talks with the union over the enterprise bargaining agreement broke down. The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union failed to overturn the lock-out in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission at the weekend and is expected to take the matter to the Federal Court. A union industrial officer, Steve Dargavel, said the union members would not accept company attempts to change their award classification system during the enterprise bargaining talks. He said workers had their annual leave cancelled after they refused to accept the proposed agreement. After talks failed, the workers were locked out, he said. “They cancelled the annual leave on the pretext that there was too much work in the shop, and then stood them down two days later on the pretext that there was no work,” said Dargavel. In 1996, the company was involved in a 105-day dispute with its maintenance workers at its glass-packaging factory at Spotswood. The dispute reportedly ended when the 136 locked-out workers voted to accept a deal of a 16% pay rise over almost three years and some voluntary redundancies.