BY Paul Glenning
ROCKHAMPTON — Meatworkers at Rockhampton's Consolidated Meat Group plant decided to return to work on April 27, after accepting an offer from CMG management that will reduce their weekly pay by up to $300 per week. The 1450 workers were locked out without pay for 18 weeks, while CMG claimed low profit levels forced it to close the plant.
The workers, members of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU), have fought hard to preserve their wages and conditions. The union opposed CMG's application to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission to overturn the workers' enterprise agreement. When the case was lost, workers' voted unanimously to reject CMG's first offer, which included 10-hour shifts (not including breaks and shower time) and likely sackings.
The new agreement has better conditions than the previous offer, but workers' are considerably worse off than they were under the previous enterprise bargaining agreement.
The previous agreement included a productivity-based system, where workers won better pay as productivity increased. Since its introduction the speed of the production line has substantially increased. Under the new agreement workers will have to maintain that speed, but will lose the productivity bonuses and work longer hours — 8.5-hour workdays.
Boners' wages will be reduced from $820 to $630 per week, slicers' from $779 to $607 per week and labourers' from $581 to $441 per week. CMG will be able to call "no work" days, closing the plant with no compensation to the workers.
The last time CMG operated on 8.5-hour workdays, turnover at the plant was 1000 workers a year, and absenteeism ran at 25%. The managers of the Kerry Packer-owned plant are projecting that most workers would leave the plant after 10 years' work — physically exhausted.
CMG is shifting towards sweatshop-style meatworks, and has set a precedent at a large meatworks that will pressure workers throughout the industry.
The time out of work has hit the workers' hard. Some have had cars repossessed, and are failing to meet payments on their houses. Some marriages have broken up, and others are under strain as workers attempt to commute huge distances in order to find work. The growing desperation of some workers made it harder to continue to fight, and was a significant factor in the decision to accept CMGs offer.
Food was kept on the workers' tables in large part by community support and money from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. An encouraging development in the campaign was the refusal by many graziers to break a picket line by bringing their cattle to slaughter.
The struggle is unlikely to finish here. Many meatworkers attended their first picket line in the last few months. They are still angry, and many feel that, newly impoverished, they have little to lose. Cassandra Mergatroid, a worker at the plant, told Green Left Weekly: "I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. I'll still be going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark."
From Green Left Weekly, May 1, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.