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Breaking News
Regulator stands up in court for workers’ rights
5th November, 2008
The national pay protector will take a legal stand on behalf of a group of La Trobe Valley workers dismissed after failing to sign Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs).Federal Workplace Ombudsman Nicholas Wilson claims the 37 workers were victims of duress and denied freedom of association.
His agency has filed documents in the Federal Court against two Yallourn-based companies - Mechanical Engineering Services (MES) and Mechanical Engineering Corporation (MEC).
MES employed the workers to provide labour to MEC.
Also respondent to the legal action is the sole director of both companies, Anthony Gordon Eliott, and MEC administrator Glenn Anthony Crisp.
The Workplace Ombudsman’s litigation follows fierce industrial action in 2006 between the workers and MES which resulted in an indefinite strike and simultaneous lock-out.
Court documents allege that MEC advertised the jobs of existing MES workers - on strike and locked out - in the Latrobe Valley Express newspaper last year with terms and conditions “substantially similar” to AWAs previously offered to MES employees, but which most had refused to sign.
The Workplace Ombudsman’s statement of claim alleges that some of the workers were earlier told by MEC management words to the effect that “if you want a job, it is conditional on you signing the AWA”.
The statement says the workers’ only practical employment options were to accept the AWA offer or lose their job and look for work elsewhere.
Mr Wilson says it is important that workplace bargaining be free of duress and workers’ rights to freedom of association, including union membership, are upheld.
In June chocolate company Darrell Lea was fined $120,000 after the Federal Magistrate’s Court found it had breached duress and freedom of association provisions of the Workplace Relations Act by its actions against casual workers as young as 16 it wanted to sign AWAs.
source www.wo.gov.au