Workers at a Toll Holdings warehouse in the Melbourne suburb of Somerton have issued a “first and final warning” to their bosses. In language any human resources manager would be proud of, workers are threatening “disciplinary action as necessary” if the company doesn’t clean up its act.

Toll is a massive logistics company. Its warehouses supply major supermarket chains including Coles. In July it was revealed that the company is looking to diversify into the human warehousing of refugees on small Pacific islands. It paid for the shadow minister for immigration, Scott Morrison, to fly to Nauru, where he advocated the construction of a sprawling “tent city” to house deported asylum seekers. Toll wants the contract to supply these tents.

Last year the Somerton warehouse at the centre of the current dispute was the site of a significant strike and two-week picket. Hundreds of workers organised by the National Union of Workers fought for and won wages and conditions that were comparable to those of other workers in the Coles supply chain.

After the strike, this increasingly confident group of workers began a campaign over health and safety issues. The bosses who run this warehouse are notorious for demanding that staff meet unrealistic targets that necessitate dangerously fast rates of work, often leading to injury.

Toll runs its own workplace injury insurance division, which assesses the claims of workers injured on its sites. Unsurprisingly, injured workers say Toll managers consistently find that reported injuries are not work related, or that injured workers are fit to return to work. Last year the company was exposed in the Fair Work Commission for routinely engaging private investigators to stalk workers on sick leave. Often injured workers are forced to take unpaid leave to recover .

For the last few months, workers at this warehouse have been pushing for the right to elect more health and safety representatives, an important role in an industry where chronic injury is common. Toll managers have done what they can to block the elections and recently upped the ante by sacking one of the existing union representatives, Jon Dixon, who has been outspoken about safety concerns.

In response, workers and their union have accused Toll of violating its own corporate code of conduct, which demands that employees practise “Safety, Teamwork, Respect, Integrity, Value, and Excellence”. They ask, “Is it valuing safety to take disciplinary action against workers for reporting safety concerns? Is funding a campaign to house asylum seekers in tropical camps that were deemed unsafe for women and children displaying a commitment to community safety?”

While their bosses rabbit on with empty words about safety and respect, these workers are backing their sacked workmate and pushing to hold the company to account.