By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
WORKERS at a Dandenong South bus-making factory are expected to extend a six-month industrial dispute by voting down a pay offer on Thursday.
Many of the Volgren workforce — members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union — downed tools for four work days in a row up until last Tuesday as part of the dispute.
Warren Butler, assistant national vehicle division secretary of the AMWU, estimated about 100 of the 120 workforce had joined the protected stopwork action.
Each day, a group of about 50 disgruntled Volgren workers held barbecues outside the factory’s Hammond Road fence.
Mr Butler said the main sticking point was proposed job classification changes that would cut new workers’ pay by 30 per cent.
“There’s important union principles at stake,” Mr Butler said. “They’re effectively taking us on a race to the bottom. It’s a tribute to our guys. They’ve got mortgages and it would have been easy for them not to worry about the workers coming through.”
Volgren’s general manager of sales and marketing Tony Kerr could not be contacted.
At the start of the dispute in August, he told the Journal that the bus-making market had steered downwards.
“The bus industry is having more difficult times. Governments aren’t spending the money they used to and there are significantly less buses being ordered than in the past five years,” he said at the time.
“Whatever the workers are being offered in the current business environment is better than being offered nothing and losing their jobs.”
What do you think? Post a comment below.
For all the latest breaking news, stay with this website. Also, follow the Weekly at facebook.com/dandenongjournal or on Twitter @DandyJournal.
