Blockade lifted at Coles warehouse

Date
    July 23, 2012 - 7:23PM


A BLOCKADE that had shut down a massive Coles warehouse in Melbourne's north — trapping $32 million worth of the supermarket's food and alcohol inside — is over.   

The Toll Group, the logistics firm Coles outsources its operations to at the distribution centre in Somerton, reached an agreement with its striking workforce this afternoon.

At least 467 employees who worked at the distribution centre had gone on strike on July 10, blocking entry to all trucks and staff.

They were demanding that Toll give them rostered days off, the right to choose whether to work public holidays, shift loading for afternoon and night shifts, the right for casuals to become permanent employees after six months, better union access to the centre, and wage increases.   


In the end, the striking workers got most of what they had asked for.   

Their union argued it was a win for workers, while Toll said tonight that it was little more than a re-working of the cash offer it put on the table before the strike began.

Toll's Andrew Ethell said the value of what Toll had been offering its workforce through the two-week-long battle had not changed. "It remains an effective four per cent annual wage rise over three years," he said.

The negotiated settlement had been achieved by shuffling the structure of how wages and conditions were allocated, he said, "effectively reducing some conditions in order to be able to increase others".

Mr Ethell said it was a "shame the illegal blockade ... has delayed a resolution being reached earlier".

But the state secretary of the National Union of Workers, Tim Kennedy, said the dispute had demonstrated that the model Coles had employed — contracting out its workforce to drive down employee conditions — would not work when workers joined together and bargained hard.   

"Workers have demonstrated that they can fight back and win conditions that have been taken from them," Mr Kennedy said. "It proves that workers, through organisation and joining unions, can fight for jobs that they can count on — jobs that have some fairness about them.       

Mr Kennedy said Toll had spent "millions of dollars" on the legal battle over the strike.

Toll last week estimated, in affidavits tendered to the Supreme Court, that the dispute had trapped at least $32 million worth of Coles' stock in the warehouse. Some of this produce is now expected to be thrown out because it will be too close to its use by date.

A spokesman for Coles said the company was pleased with the outcome: "We'll now work with Toll on a plan to bring the Somerton site back into operation as quickly as is practical."

One striking employee, Spiros Cechrin, was tonight among those outside the warehouse removing pallets that blockaded the centre, and sweeping up ashes from large drums that had contained fires.

Mr Cechrin said it was "a good win", and that the cold temperatures over the last fortnight had made it tough on the picket line.   

"People were catching colds, they were freezing in the weather, they were told by their doctors to stay away, but a lot of them, as soon as they got better, came back again," he said.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/blockade-lifted-at-coles-warehouse-20120723-22kei.html#ixzz21RGkya6z