AMWU: Ausreo Lock-out

Workers locked out by western Sydney building products supplier Ausreo are feeling the financial strain but remain determined to stick together after three weeks without work.

The 24 members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union have been locked out by management for seeking the same wages that colleagues interstate get paid for doing the same work.

They have since been keeping a daily vigil outside the gates of their factory at Wetherill Park. The union has urged Ausreo to re-start talks and allow the workers to return as many risk losing their homes if they miss mortgage payments.

On Friday, management and the union met for the first time in a fortnight, but there was no resolution to the dispute with the workers preparing to dig in for the long haul.

The union says Ausreo, which supplies concrete reinforcing products to the building and construction industry,  has been stonewalling since the existing enterprise agreement ran out in February, claiming that paying machine operators in Sydney the same wages and conditions as machine operators at Ausreo’s Melbourne site was “not sustainable.”

Most members are level four machine operators, wanting their hourly wage rate to be raised $3 so that it equals the rate the company pays in Melbourne.

They are also seeking improvements to redundancy provisions. Instead Ausreo offered the possibility of a 3% “Christmas bonus” paid at management discretion, with no change to present base rates for the next three years.

AMWU organiser Ghazi Noshie said: “There’s a lack of respect from management for the workforce and I sense this company had always wanted to lock them out and try to destroy the union onsite.”

Delegate Dennis Ngo said workers were bearing up well because they were united and had support from AMWU members at other sites and the community.

Like many of his co-workers, Mr Ngo has had to deal with financial strain and the stress of uncertainty during the dispute. The Ngo family have also cancelled child care for their two-year-old daughter as they try to survive on the wages of Dennis’ wife Jenny, who works in a food processing factory.

“I’ve had to go the bank and have part of my mortgage payment delayed by some weeks,” Mr Ngo said. “There’s a lot of us the same, but we’re determined because we want a fair go, we’re sticking together.”