Community and union supporters joined sacked Carleton & United Breweries (CUB) workers and "Scabby the Rat" for a lunchtime protest outside Wallan Engineering in Campbellfield, in Melbourne's northern suburbs on September 15.
Wallan has been supplying most of the scabs to replace the CUB maintenance workforce, who were sacked, only to be offered the same work with a 65% wage cut, under an external labour hire company enterprise bargaining agreement.
According to the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) Victorian Branch, in discussions with Wallan's workers it was discovered they are being paid the same rates that the #CUB55 were on before they were sacked.
"If CUB are prepared to pay these rates to the "temporary workforce" then they should reinstate the highly-skilled and competent workers they unceremoniously threw onto the scrap heap 14 weeks ago," the ETU said on its Facebook page.
Alan Dinon is one of the CUB 55. He told Green Left Weekly he had worked for CUB at the brewery for 40 years as a dual trades electrical and instrumentation technician, before being sacked.
The dispute has been continuing for 14 weeks and the company is clearly feeling the heat. A consumer boycott of all CUB products is continuing.
More photos of the protest can be found here.
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