STOP WORK AT MAJOR CONSTRUCTION SUPPLY COMPANY: CSR
Workers at CSR’s only Australian weatherboard manufacturing facility will down tools taking 12-hour stoppages across three crews from 6 am today and Monday next week.
CSR is a large building products company in Australia and New Zealand supplying well-known building products for residential and commercial construction.
Stoppages across two days could impact CSR’s weatherboard supply and if further action is voted on supply to the building industry, in particular the residential market, could be impacted significantly.
Workers have been bargaining for 5 months, since April. This industrial action is the first in 30-years for workers, who started with overtime bans in August.
Comment attributable to UWU Organiser Sukanya Ananth:
“Workers want a fair wage increase, fair rostering to ensure work-life balance and fair redundancies, including a voluntary redundancy process.
“Workers want to see wages go up by 7% in the first year, 5% in the second year and 5% in the third year to keep up with cost-of-living pressures after copping only 2.5% wage increases in 2022 and 2023, well below CPI.
“CSR is seeking to be able to change workers’ rosters at any time and have them work shifts of any length or pattern of the company’s choosing. The nature of the plant and the construction industry supply chain is that work is cyclical and there are peak periods and slow periods each year. But that should not leave people without any certainty about what their take home pay will be or an ability to make financial plans.
“Last year CSR made eight workers redundant, all of them new with less than 3 years of service. They had mortgages and young families. Meanwhile other workers on site would have volunteered for a redundancy because it suited them in their time of life.
“Workers at CSR want to ensure that anyone who wants to stay and make a future at CSR gets an opportunity to do that.”
ENDS
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