Via: http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Baiada-is-playing-chicken-with-livelihood...
Until the dramatic events of Friday night, the Baiada Poultry dispute in suburban Melbourne had not had the publicity of Qantas. That’s a shame because the gutsy fight by low-paid Baiada workers is just as important in the fight for fair treatment at work.
Baiada workers, like this chook, have their hands tied by greater powers. Pic: John Fotiadis.
Media coverage has focused on the clashes between police and workers, but has ignored the basic issues at stake. A couple of hundred low-paid workers have been forced to take legal industrial action because their employer has refused to bargain with them.
They are taking collective action in an attempt to stop the spread of insecure work – and ensure that Baiada workers on low wages have some certainty around their jobs and basic rights to sick leave and holiday pay.
Have you ever been inside a poultry processing plant? It’s not pleasant. The work is dirty, difficult and dangerous. The company has already been fined for a death which occurred on one of its farms, and the courts are currently investigating a death at the Laverton plant.
We need to wait for the courts to rule on the cause of this death, but I will make a general point that workers who have not got secure employment are less likely to raise safety issues with their bosses.
Baiada workers are on around $17-19 per hour for permanent employees, with those on casual or other contracts often doing the same work for less. Staff are asking for a 5 per cent pay increase, the company has offered 3 per cent.
But what the debate is really about is security of work and equal treatment for all employees. The increasing numbers of workers employed as cash in hand, contract or labour hire workers at the plant has undermined pay, conditions and safety for the permanent workforce.
Employees want an assurance that they will not be shifted on to contract or casual employment, and a way to move into permanent employment once they have spent a certain amount of time at the company.
They have sought to raise these issues with the company as part of regular enterprise bargaining negotiations, but management has repeatedly rejected their modest claims and refuses to recognise their rights to collective bargaining.
As is sometimes the case when a company refuses to bargain, the workers have exercised their legal right to take industrial action. Contrary to popular belief, workers on contract or casual work do not automatically earn more than their colleagues in full-time work.
The indirect model in place at Baiada is all for the benefit of the employers, not the staff who are trying to pay off mortgages or monthly bills with no certainty about how much they will get paid. Unlike the directors of Baiada, whose company controls 35 per cent of Australia’s poultry market and turned over $1.2 billion in 2009-10.
The Baiada family’s wealth was estimated at $495 million by BRW magazine in June 2011.
What’s happening at Baiada is an extreme version of what is happening across Australia. Workers on a variety of contracting arrangements are working alongside each other. The risks are being shifted from employers to workers. Complex contracting arrangements are used to push the limits of the law and strip entitlements away from workers.
It is common to hear the argument that industrial disputes should be limited to pay and conditions, and other arrangements left to the discretion of the management. But it is impossible to separate pay and conditions from the issue of insecure work.
What is the point of agreeing to pay and conditions if employers can simply shift to other forms of work with no chance for workers to change this?
I wrote on the Punch a month ago about the rise in insecure work in Australia - which is now about 40 per cent of the workforce - and the problems it was posing for people trying to pay off a mortgage or establish themselves in a career. I also wrote about the ACTU’s push to give people real choice about their working arrangements.
This case is a concrete example of what we are fighting for.
Since then the ACTU has announced the first formal national inquiry into insecure work. To be chaired by former Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe, it has begun taking submissions from the Australian community, and will travel around Australia to hold hearings next February and March.
Since the announcement of our “Secure Jobs. Better Future” campaign, I have heard many more stories about the frustrations of coping with uncertainty in the workplace and the difficulty of getting permanent work.
The shift from permanent to insecure work is a social experiment that we have undertaken without thinking through the consequences. No one has examined how things have changed over the last 20 years.
The Howe Inquiry wants to hear from all sides of the debate, those who think they benefit from insecure work, and those that don’t. But the debate should not be narrowly focused on the economic side.
We want to examine just what the effects of insecure work are on the family which can’t plan paying its bills, or the country town that can’t field a football team because so many players cannot commit to play on Saturdays as they never know whether they have to work or not.
What are the long term effects of having such a big proportion of our workforce on insecure wages? What happens when many families do not have the chance of building some financial security or paying off a home - assuming they can get a loan in the first place?
How does society change when people are increasingly shifting from city to city to look for work leaving family and friendship networks behind? We may have calculated the benefits to employers, but I do not think we have really looked at the social costs.
I understand that no one is guaranteed a permanent job for life, but there is no reason why six-month contracts have to become the norm. This is particular the case for jobs like teaching and nursing, which are not seasonal, but are increasingly becoming contract-based.
The book “Nickel and Dimed”, by American journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, details the emergence of an underpaid class of US workers, stuck in short-term jobs and unable to save enough money to buy homes or go to college.
This was written during the economic boom at the start of the century, and many of those insecure workers are now facing long stretches of unemployment.
We are not at the same level as the USA - we have a higher minimum wage and guaranteed entitlements - but I do not want to see us going down a path that leads to big disparities of wealth and opportunity in society.
Two-out-five Australian workers are in some kind of insecure work. Two million workers have no paid sick leave, no annual or long service leave and no right to ongoing work. The risks of the workplace are no longer falling on the shoulders of employers, but on their most vulnerable staff.
Other countries are beginning to recognise this and make changes to better protect insecure workers. In the UK, temporary agency workers get the same holiday pay and other entitlements as permanent staff after 12 weeks with the same company.
Unions will continue to push for better conditions for insecure workers through the bargaining process, but I think as a society we need to start having a debate about what level of insecure work is acceptable.
Is a bigger profit for Baiada, or a couple of cents off a roast chook at the supermarket worth putting workers’ lives at risk and cutting away at the security and entitlements of our lowest-paid workers and their families?
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