Reports
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Tasmanian Secretary & Federal President Grant Courtney |
AMIEU Tas Branch 2008 - 2009 Financial Statements
BRANCH SECRETARY’S REPORT
A lot has happened on the industrial and political land scape since our last edition...
WORKCHOICES IS DEAD but not buried until July 2009. MR RUDD’S approval rating is around 70% with the Liberals floundering in their own vomit not knowing what Peter Costello will do in the future. BARACK OBAMA is the new president of the USA and the Chinese want to capitalize on the world financial crisis making large bids on depleted prices on our natural resources. Yes, we are about to enter into some fairly unfamiliar territory it would seem.
However some employers in our industry are still using any excuse to try and down grade workers wages and conditions. A key example of this is Harvey beef in WA where under the leadership of Tony Munns (yes the ex CEO of the BLUE RIBBON group) and (Boof) Peter Allen (ex Tasman group and O’Connors stand over man) have sacked 150 of our members because they did not agree to support a 20% pay cut. The company was blaming the global financial crisis for the wage cuts, however Mr Munns did not offer to sacrifice any of his $400k + benefits a year.
MODERN AWARD PROCESS
One of Mr Rudd’s promises was to return a modern award system as the minimum standards for all Australians. Our existing federal awards which had been stripped of core conditions by the Liberals will be set aside as of January 2010. There will be only one federal system with a new modern meat award that will cover all states in Australia as of 2010. This award will generally retain and return most terms and conditions of most state awards and in some cases increase certain benefits. For example casual loading will increase from 20% to 25%. This new award will be the new minimum standard and all future agreements will have to at least reflect wages and conditions of a similar nature.
So we send a very clear message to those grubby employers who have forced sub standard AWAs onto workers, be aware your days are numbered as you will be negotiating a collective agreement with us in the future.
FEDERAL PRESIDENT’S REPORT
Since being elected last September Brian Crawford the Federal Secretary has requested my assistance in attending meetings in Canberra to highlight our concerns to the Minister of Immigration, Chris Evans, about certain employers’ preference to use temporary immigrants as opposed to employing Australian workers (more on this issue on page 6). We have also had meetings with the Minister of Primary Industries Tony Burke and the CEO of the RSPCA on the ramifications of live shipping on our industry. We have sought meetings with Anthony Albanese, the Minister of Transport on the freight equalization scheme as we see this as a clear disadvantage to meat workers’ jobs in Tasmania.
I have recently represented the Federal Council as key note speaker at the Australian Meat Industry Council “bosses union” National Occupational Health and Safety Conference in Sydney.
I have also been recently appointed as a director to the Meat Industry National Training Advisory Council which is the governing body on training packages for the meat industry. I have been performing these national duties in conjunction with my current duties as Tasmanian branch secretary.
More reports:
Secretary's Report 07-08 summer edition
AMIEU Tasmanian Branch Financial Report for the year ended 30 June 2008
