Triumph clothing strike ends

By Bill Mason

BRISBANE -- More than 350 women at Triumph International women's underwear factories at Ipswich and Wynnum ended a nine-day strike on November 3, after gaining some improvement in the redundancy package offered by the company.

The strike and 24-hour picket at both plants began after the company, trading as the House of Jenyns, announced it would shut its operations in Australia and shift offshore next June.

The new offer, accepted in secret ballots, increased the redundancy pay for longer-term workers from one week per year to 1

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55D> weeks for each year of service above five.

Workers at the Ipswich plant told Green Left Weekly they were not sure about the offer, and distrusted management's intentions, especially the section demanding “100% productivity”, but that the offer could be all they could realistically win.

One striker, Gaylene, said that support for the strike had been “great. We had all of Ipswich behind us.”

Another woman said, “We stood up for what we though was right. We are proud of what we did. We can walk in tomorrow with heads held high.”

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