BY CHRIS SLEE

MELBOURNE — Two hundred power workers and supporters gathered outside Nauru House on May 16, the first day of an Industrial Relations Commission hearing on Yallourn Energy's application for an arbitrated award that would take away workers' job security and working conditions.

A company lawyer told the commission that Yallourn Energy needed to get rid of the current enterprise agreement which contains “nostalgic vestiges of the public service model”. The company regards the existing award as “prescriptive”, because it contains many provisions which require the agreement of unions before changes are made and prevents compulsory overtime and forced redundancies.

Sixty million dollars worth of writs have been taken out against individual power workers and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, and injunctions have been issued preventing activists from speaking about industrial action, or about Yallourn Energy's secret plans to sack workers and replace them with contractors.

Luke van der Meulen of the CFMEU, told workers outside the hearing that unions needed to “break out” of the current “rotten” industrial relations system.

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