Profits, lives and exploitation

Kim Doyle

“When I closed my eyes, there was a feeling like I’m going, but I’m going slowly. I’m not in pain but I’m dying.” Harinder Singh, a cleaner at Turi Foods’ (La Ionica) Thomastown factory, was injured attempting to clear debris from an unguarded chicken neck trimming machine. Harinder was trapped in the machine for over an hour before firefighters were able to cut it open.

The poultry industry is dangerous. The National Union of Workers (NUW), the union that covers most workers in the industry, says that 37 percent of workers it recently surveyed reported being injured on the job.

This month is the third anniversary of the death of 34-year-old Sarel Singh at Baiada Poultry’s (Steggles) factory in Laverton. Instead of stopping for the time it would have taken for Sarel to clean the area, the chain line machine that killed him was kept running at full speed, dispatching 183 birds per minute. According to a union report, Sarel was standing on a ladder hosing the area when he was swept into the machine and decapitated. Three years later, despite Baiada being charged with four offences under health and safety laws, not one count against the company has been heard in court.

Sarel, who was working under contract to a cleaning company, is not the only worker to die at Baiada. In 2005, truck driver Mario Azzopardi, who was also a contractor, was crushed to death when a steel module of live chickens weighing around 550 kilograms was dropped on him by an unlicensed forklift driver. Baiada was convicted of health and safety breaches and fined just $100,000. The company successfully appealed the decision all the way to the High Court.

For the bosses, poultry is a billion dollar industry, dominated by two companies owned by the Camilleri and Ingham families. Together they account for 63 percent of market share. Baiada Poultry, owned by the Camilleris, last reported an annual revenue of $1,195 million. In 2011, the family was listed as being worth around $495 million.

Despite competition between the major supermarkets forcing the industry to lower prices, poultry companies have kept profits high by shifting risk to workers. A recent survey by the NUW found that 20 percent of poultry workers are employed through “non-standard means”. Typically, this involves using labour hire firms, forcing workers to register themselves as businesses or paying them cash in hand at below site rates as low as $9 an hour. The study also found that these workers are significantly more likely to suffer injury at work.

A delegate at Turi Foods revealed the lengths to which the company goes to avoid liability for the people it injures. He described workers being pressured to take out their own personal injury insurance rather than file a WorkCover claim. Those who do file an injury claim are hounded by management. “As soon as you hand in your WorkCover form, you get the phone calls, and I experienced that first hand with my injury … there’s a lot of bullying in the workplace.” He continued, “People are being told to work faster and faster and faster and then of course, when their bodies wear out, churn them out, and if they go on WorkCover for a year, they sack them.”

Due to visa restrictions on working hours, international students are particularly vulnerable to exploitation in the industry. Harinder Singh was in Australia on a student visa when he was injured in 2009. He suffered tendon and nerve damage to his arm, severe bruising and cuts to his eye. In hospital he was visited by a man from the factory. “I’d never seen him before, never heard his name or anything.” The man said he worked for a company called Ken Enterprises. “He further told me that because I was working full time for cash, if anyone asked I was to tell them I was working for Ken Enterprises. He then handed me $2000 in cash.” He was advised by representatives of the same labour hire company to fly back to India and, on his return to Australia, to move some distance from where he was living at the time of the accident so that the union could not find him and get him in “further trouble”.

Immigration laws criminalise workers, silencing them and allowing companies to profit with impunity from their insecurity. The NUW has called for an easing of the restrictions on international students’ visas to allow them to work legitimately. It also wants legal reprieve for those working without visas who speak out against dangerous practices.

However, the government is not on the same page as the union. The legal framework is inadequate, and Fair Work is loath to enforce the scant regulation that does exist. Last year, when companies were found guilty of lying to workers and engaging in sham contracting practices, the Fair Work ombudsman proposed sending them “educative letters”.

The bosses can always rely on the state to mobilise to break a picket line, but the state is suddenly powerless when workers like Sarel, Mario and Harinder are injured or killed for the sake of profit. This is why delegates stress the need for different sites in the same industry to work together, for unity and strength in numbers. Cross-site organisation also gives greater leverage over the companies, ensures the same standards for everyone and provides opportunities to learn from successful industrial action. What is needed is an industry-wide fight back and the kind of class struggle unionism that can challenge the dark satanic mills of modern Australia.

 

Monash students join staff fight

Tess Dimos

Staff at Monash University in Melbourne stepped up their campaign for a pay rise and improved conditions with a four-hour stop-work on Monday 29 July, the first teaching day of semester two. Striking staff were joined by students as they picketed five entrances to the Clayton campus.

The union representing staff, the National Tertiary and Education Union, is seeking a reduction in workloads and a decrease in the numbers of staff in insecure employment. Currently 74 percent of staff are employed in casual or non-permanent positions.

The union also maintains that job creation has not matched the rising student intake numbers. Neither have staff wages matched the staggering rise in remuneration for Vice-Chancellor Ed Byrne, who took home a whopping $960,000 last year. Explaining the frustration felt on the picket line, NTEU member Patty Rowlingson said, “The university forced us to take action by refusing to negotiate.”

At one picket, student supporters attempted a sit-in to block traffic but were dispersed by police. However, union members across the campus had an impact through their stop-work and mass leafleting on the day. The picket at the main campus entrance managed to reduce incoming traffic to a single lane, and staff stopped most cars to hand out information about their claims, despite obstruction by police and university security.

Students and staff have a mutual interest in fighting for improved working conditions and a better education, and must continue to stand together. The Labor government’s proposal to cut $2.3 billion in funding to higher education will negatively impact both staff and students. If students want to turn back this assault on our education, we need to see the university workers as allies.

The next step in the campaign against the cuts is the protest on Tuesday 20 August (see page 7). This provides an important opportunity for further combined action. The secretary of the Victorian branch of the NTEU, Colin Long, has announced the union will be organising members to stop work to join the rally. Students should welcome this news and continue to join with staff wherever and whenever they can.

 

ACTU signs off on productivity pact at workers’ expense

Steph Price

While Kevin Rudd ensures that anti-refugee hysteria preoccupies the nation, the government and the Business Council of Australia (representing the top 100 corporations) have been cooking up plans to erode the wages and conditions of millions of Australian workers.

Details of negotiations to reach a new “productivity pact” have recently been made public. Unsurprisingly, the pact is a blueprint to make the working class work harder for less. Breaking down “rigidities in the labour market” is code for cutting wages, eroding conditions and undermining collective bargaining. For bosses, this means higher profits, less regulation and a more disposable and compliant workforce.

It is not just government and big business in the negotiations. The Australian Council of Trade Unions, the country’s peak union body, has a seat at the table as well. Shamefully, the ACTU has been a loyal player in the productivity game since its historic sell-out in the Prices and Income Accord of the 1980s.

It signed off on this latest pact weeks before the deal was made public – and without any consultation with workers. Far from being prepared to challenge the money-grubbing, anti-worker agenda of big business, ACTU President Ged Kearney praised the BCA for showing “vision for Australia”. Secretary Dave Oliver “welcomed the opportunity offered by a new productivity agenda”.

Where the ACTU points to any disagreements with the plan – and for form’s sake it really ought to – it’s that it doesn’t do enough “to stem the loss of skills in the ranks of Australian management”!

If there is any better evidence that the peak union body is totally useless, you’d be hard pressed to find it.

 

The ship that sailed with no freight

Jerome Small

A young man is crushed at his work. He dies twice on the operating table. He survives but has permanent damage to multiple organs. That was three years ago. Now, the company wants to sack him.

The story doesn’t even make the news.

A group of workers and their supporters gather to picket the same boss over safety issues. A worker, always staunch about safety, has been set up and sacked. Then another four workers are also sacked for refusing to do the job of the sacked worker, which they are not qualified to perform.

The giant Spirit of Tasmania usually runs a passenger and freight service between Melbourne and Devonport. But on this day, Friday 26 July, within a couple of hours, semitrailers are backed up over a kilometre down the road. No trucks are loaded and the ship leaves dock carrying nothing but air where the cargo would have been.

The courts hurry to grant injunctions, the workers and their union are threatened with massive damages, and a media frenzy ensues. 

Businessmen pour out their hearts about the tragedy of trade delayed. Dozens of news reports express concern for an alleged $250,000 worth of seafood carried by one truck. It’s left to a single ABC report, days later, to mention that the seafood is frozen.

Obviously, a load of frozen squid matters more to the capitalist press than human life. An effective picket is one of the worst crimes that can be committed against capital.

The dispute behind this picket remains unresolved. Indications are that until it is workers and supporters will continue gathering on the picket line at Station Pier, West Melbourne.

 

Community fights to defend aged care

Lauren Stevenson, Australian Nurses and Midwifery Fed member

A crowd of 300 crashed a Monash City Council meeting on 30 July, holding a rowdy rally to oppose the proposed sale of two council-run aged care facilities, Monash Gardens and Elizabeth Gardens.

“What do we want? Quality aged care! Where do we want it? Monash Gardens!” went the chants.

Residents’ statements were read out. Ron Turner explained that Monash Gardens is his home, and the staff who provide care are like his family. He told the meeting that he does not want his home sold off to the highest bidder.

Others, including residents’ family members, argued that if the facilities are privatised, there is no way to ensure that the current quality of care will be maintained.

Private providers have no obligation to re-employ staff, often operate with fewer staff per resident and ration supplies, leading to compromised care.

Councillors were peppered with questions about the sell-off and its likely impact. At times their responses were met with jeering and calls of “Liars!”. When one councillor confirmed that 180 staff members would be given no guarantees about their jobs, one angry protester moved to sack the council.

This mobilisation was a promising start to the campaign to stop the privatisation of these facilities. This fight kicks off in the wake of the Victorian state government’s recent announcement that the Mildura Base Hospital, privatised in 2000, will be returned to public hands after a long community campaign.

The Save Monash Gardens campaign can also point to a history of successful organising against privatisation of aged care. In 2009 a determined community and staff campaign involving rolling pickets was able to prevent the NSW state government selling off an aged care facility in Newcastle.

We should fight against privatisation to push back the neoliberal agenda that treats aged care as a commodity. We should fight for the residents and their families who want proper care. We should fight for the staff who want jobs with decent working conditions. If we don’t fight, we lose.

 

NSW nurses vote for industrial action

Rex Armstrong

Three thousand nurses and midwives voted for industrial action at a mass meeting held on 24 July.

“After 10 fruitless meetings with the Ministry of Health and their point-blank refusal to extend ratios and negotiate safe patient care, it has come to this”, said NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) secretary Brett Holmes.

The union is calling for ratios of one nurse to four patients on the floor, one to three in emergency departments and children’s units and one to one in intensive and critical care. One nurse described to Red Flag being responsible for anywhere up to 50 patients at a time in the hospital waiting room. “A lot of the time we’re in tears because we cannot cope. There simply aren’t enough nurses around. We asked our nursing unit manager for help, but we’re told there’s nothing they could do. In the end, we were simply given extra IV drips and fluids for patients rather than extra staff to assist with their care.”