Page 10 - ETU Journal Autumn 2017

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THE ETU > SUMMER 2016
www.facebook.com/etuvic
The positive aspects of these despicable actions by CUB management are:
When the call is put out for rank- and-file members to stand together to support one another it makes the union movement even stronger.
A dispute like this empowers people with a greater purpose than that of their own individual needs.
A practical exercise like this is also a great way to educate the new generation of unionists about what it means to be part of the union movement.
It’s with this strength in numbers that we, as a union movement, are able to take up the fight for fair wages and conditions against a multinational company that makes billions of dollars in profit each year.
ETU historian Ken Purdham has seen companies take on their workers before. He knows that a war of attrition will never succeed because the ETU will never take a backwards step.
The once iconic Australian company Carlton & United Breweries has been sold off to yet another foreign conglomerate. The new executives, wanting to impose their business control, decided to sack their maintenance workforce employed under a collective agreement and offer their jobs back on individual contracts at 65 per cent less pay.
Many of these workers have been at CUB for years, some of them for generations; they’re as iconic as the beer itself. To sack them like this
is a big executive gamble and a strategy that fails seriously on two fronts: the outcome, if successful would result in the workforce becoming individual rather
than a team and it would be
a workforce that resents its employer rather than working with a sense of pride and identity.
MANY OF THESE WORKERS HAVE BEEN
AT CUB FOR YEARS, SOME OF THEM FOR GENERATIONS; THEY’RE AS ICONIC AS THE BEER ITSELF.
A blind, callous attack
To declare war on workers critical to the operation of the plant is not clear thinking. It’s just a blind, callous attack on workers’ wages and conditions, and the simple fact is that there are no winners from such an attack. In the end, the residual bitterness lingers long and the wounds heal slowly.
Management is hoping most of
the experienced workers will take
up the reduced job offers; if not,
the workforce they’ll end up with
will be an inexperienced group
of individuals. Breakdowns will
take much longer to fault-find and repair and downtime will increase dramatically. In a production environment such as CUB, a cohesive, experienced workforce is everything. Machines run themselves, but they
don’t fix themselves.
Experience is knowing in an instant what’s needed to
overcome an issue. “We’ve got this problem and we need to
fffffSEP 2016
9
Public announcement SEP 2016 of Senate Inquiry into 27 Corporate Evasion of
FWA highlighting
CUB tactics
Leaked CUB memo says chief architect of the move CUB CFO Grant Peck will not be engaged by AB InBev
OCT 2016
1
CAMPAIGNS > THE CUB55
THE FLAWS IN
CUB’S WAR ON
ITS WORKERS
fix it fast.” A supervisor or team leader needs to know
his resources and who are the best people in the team for a particular problem. Good luck if the workforce is fragmented
and individual.
8,000+ ACTU- registered Grand Final BBQs ‘CUB Free’