Liberty Members Meet with Liberty Executive Chairman Sanjeev Gupta

AWU_Victoria
Aug 31, 2018 · 3 min read

Special report from AWU Delegate Andrew Axford

I would like to thank everyone who attended and spoke at the mass meeting this week with Sanjeev Gupta.

Gupta put across his views on profit sharing and wanted us to look at it, not just knock it back. Michael Morley spoke about how the safety record had deteriorated and profits were down by $100 million and how we are a family business that has a running costs or turnovers of over $4 billion. He talked about about how they invested in the business and put capital to improve technology and was hoping to have good working relationship with the workforce.

We had expressed our request to have management not present at the end of the meeting which didn’t eventuate but I’m pretty sure the message was conveyed to Sanjeev and the management of the distrust and lack of confidence in the management on site their culture and the way the treat and interact with the workforce.

We had 14–15 people take the opportunity to speak in the meeting and express their views of how we are traveling on the site.

Things that were put across:

  • The little EBA book with all our entitlements etc we used to receive after the EBA was agreed to and adhered to and how since Onesteel have taken over that we never received an EBA book after numerous promises that we would get them.
  • Their lack of compassion when dealing with people who make mistakes and only want to punish workers even those with distinguished records.
  • The recruiting process: how some new starters had already left and shifts running short and even stopped production due to being undermanned, overtime being good to get extra money but people doing a lot of hours and getting tired.
  • Unfair treatment of two workers over the years being dismissed after income protection had ceased, both had gone to fair work and won settlements in unfair dismissal cases.
  • Some new starters hadn’t even met the manager in their area after 8 months.
  • A lot of the emphasis was on the culture of the management on site and the way they interact with the workforce, the lack of consultation and respect for the current EBA we have in place. This was evident in management’s proposed secret ballot for the company proposed EBA that was rescheduled last week for Guptas visit. We conducted a union run ballot and had a 98% no vote to reject their agreement that we had not agreed to. It was highlighted that some significant changes in the company proposed EBA weren’t conveyed in their information brochures as well as other changes that no one could understand.

All in all a good meeting to get our feelings across to management and Gupta.

The Worker

Digital edition of the AWU Victorian branch news.

AWU_Victoria

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The AWU stands up for working families by ensuring that our members get the pay, conditions, safety and respect at work that they deserve.

The Worker

Digital edition of the AWU Victorian branch news.

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