Teys are telling you times are tough and they just don’t have a fair wage rise to give you.
Beenleigh employees have been told by Teys – “We have offered the best pay increase we can right now – there is no more”…
Yet Teys have found the money to give Tamworth Employees a bonus of $1950. Most Beenleigh Employees were given less than half this amount.
The Beenleigh bonus, combined with the pittance of a pay rise of 1.25% for the last 2 years of effort, means Beenleigh workers’ wages haven’t even kept up with the increases to the cost of living.
Is the reward for your “Attendance, Attitude and Ability” somehow worth less at Beenleigh?
Could it be that Teys has been forced to the EBA negotiation table by the AMIEU members at Tamworth and Teys is throwing extra money at those workers to try and get them to back off from negotiations?
Teys appears willing to do all they can to keep the terms of their substandard EBA’s in place and stop wage increases from forming part of a registered Agreement.
Why would they want to do this?
The simple answer is that these wage increases can be taken from you at any time in the future.
Teys’ only obligation to you is to pass on the wages of the industrial agreement in place (the 2016 EBA) this remains the case until the EBA is terminated or replaced.
The longer this zombie EBA is allowed to continue, the greater the liability for Beenleigh workers grows.
As you are aware the Union recently ran a petition seeking to make Teys bargain for a new EBA at Beenleigh.
Unfortunately, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) was not satisfied that there was a majority of Beenleigh employees who wanted to make Teys bargain.
The Union raised concerns with the FWC that Teys had been rolling substantial numbers of Labour Hire employees over to direct employment as a way to counter the number of signatures gained, creating an ever moving target to reach a majority.
We also told the Commission of employees being intimidated by the Company for participating in the petition.
Teys presented to the FWC that they had a total of 613 employees at Beenleigh, the Union submitted 274 signatures to the FWC.
The Union requested that the FWC take steps to satisfy themselves of a majority by running a petition at one point in time via a secret postal ballot. The Commissioner was not of a mind to do this unless the Union could provide more evidence of the concerns we had raised.
The Union is not willing to expose our members to more intimidation by Teys by having them identified via the process in the FWC, we were therefore forced to withdraw the application for a Majority Support Determination.
Teys Beenleigh workers now have a decision to make, do you accept that you are worth less than Teys Tamworth employees and every other Unionised shed, or, do you stand together in union and ask for something more?
Standing together in union seems to be working at Tamworth!
In Union,
Jimmy Cottrell-Dormer AMIEU Organiser