Sue Bolton
Quite a few places in the meat industry have AWAs. Some are in the retail services. Not a single AWA in the industry includes a rostered day off and the AWAs often allow the line to operate at a faster speed without increasing the amount that people are paid.
The span of hours is also different. Under AWAs, the span of ordinary hours is wider and longer to eradicate penalty rates.
One AWA has people on a 40-hour week, but the company can force you to do a 14-hour day and two 12-hour days in a week to make up a 40-hour week without penalty rates.
A lot of AWAs have a daily hire so if the company says there's no work, you don't have to be paid. And a lot of AWAs consider a minimum day's pay to be six hours.
The Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union's Victorian branch has been successful in blocking AWAs in some places. The nine-month lockout at O'Connors in Pakenham didn't start as an AWA dispute, but that's what it became.
In early 1999, when the enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA) was being renegotiated, O'Connors demanded a 10-20% pay cut. That was rejected by the workers and they were locked out by management. When the lockout ended, the company only took people back if they signed AWAs.
None of the existing workers would sign AWAs so the company brought in refugees on temporary protection visas to work under AWAs. The workers who held out against AWAs won reinstatement and eventually won the right to be put back onto EBA pay and conditions, which were way ahead of the AWAs.
When the EBA expired, O'Connors eradicated the EBA and a specific award that covers only O'Connors workers was created.
From Green Left Weekly, August 3, 2005.
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