By CASEY NEILL
INDUSTRIAL action could taint Sandown Racecourse’s Australia Day event.
Sandown and Caulfield garden and grounds maintenance staff last Thursday learned that the Melbourne Racing Club (MRC) would be contracting out their jobs.
Australian Workers Union (AWU) Victorian secretary Ben Davis said the decision affected 34 people, followed six months of enterprise bargaining agreement negotiations and was “a disproportionate response and more than a little precious”.
“My organiser turned up for a negotiation session to be given a documents saying they were contracting out all the jobs at Caulfield and Sandown,” he said.
“There were no whispers. It’s just come completely out of the blue.
“It’s an appalling decision.”
Mr Davis said the union would lodge a dispute with Fair Work and call an emergency meeting of delegates from all metropolitan Melbourne racecourses for next week to “talk through a campaign”.
He said the campaign could affect coming race meetings, including the Australia Day meet at Sandown Racecourse.
The event launches the Blue Diamond Series, which includes two Caulfield race days in February.
An MRC spokesman said the decision followed a broader efficiency review that MRC started 18 months ago to tackle rising losses in its racing business, which topped $6 million per annum in recent years.
He said employees would be offered voluntary redundancies as part of the existing enterprise agreement which is due to expire on 31 January.
MRC was forced to explore other options, he said, because the AWU made unreasonable demands.
