Envelope workers still out

Australian Paper has told its striking workers to return to the factory floor of its envelope manufacturing plant in order for negotiations to continue, but the 90 employees are refusing, and instead have told the company to negotiate first.

The staff are currently still picketing outside the Japanese-owned company’s envelope and stationery manufacturing plant in Preston, after starting the protest last Tuesday.

The site at Preston manufactures a significant percentage of the country’s envelopes, two billion last year, and is the biggest domestic manufacturer, it sells into the volume market. Melbourne and Sydney have other envelope manufacturers but they are operating on a much smaller scale. Candida Envelopes late last year week announced it was closing its Sydney envelope manufacturing site and switching production to its Adelaide operation.

Craig Dunn, senior marketing manager with Australian Paper says, “The situation is unchanged from the company’s perspective.”

Dean Griffiths, union organiser with the AMWU says, “We had an email exchange with the company. They said they were willing to negotiate as long as we stop corporate action. We know what that means, they will take us into the office, give us the same terms and we will get nothing. So we are going to keep going and everyone is still determined.”

Around 90 workers stopped work and formed a picket line after nine months of failed negotiations for a new enterprise agreement. The factory staff have requested a 2.5 per cent annual wage increase over three years and the company in response is offering a 6.5 per cent pay increase over four years, with a pay rise freeze for the first year, followed by 2 per cent, 2 per cent, and 2.5 per cent increases over the next three years. Those picketing say they only want the same rise that was given to the warehouse workers, which was 2.5 per cent.

Other issues in the dispute include the reduction of the staff’s rostered days off from 16 to 12 and a reclassification of the workplace structure which would define pay for roles as lower than what some workers currently receive, potentially meaning that it could take years for some workers to see a pay rise.

The Australian Paper factory is one of the company’s two plants, the other being its paper mill in the Victorian town of Maryvale. The company has 1300 staff overall.

 

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