CASTRICUM EBA UPDATE Delegates Report   20th February, 2003     Automation of Slaughter Floor On the 19th  December 2002 the Shed Delegate Brian Rowe, Butchers Delegate John Calthorpe and Health & Safety Delegate Wayne Snooks were summonsed to the boardroom. Mandi Bryant proceeded to run through a presentation of the Company's intention to automate slaughterfloor positions. She drew diagrams of manning positions on the whiteboard and had them printed off.   The first stage was to implement something that we had agreed to in the 2000 Agreement, which was the operation of a "weisand chain" in the sticking area and the consequent reclassification of 2 slaughterman positions to those of labourers. This has always been referred to, for the want of better terminology, as the '" 37 man team". This came about because it has always been a bit of an unknown quantity as to how many slaughtermen would be needed to make it work effectively.   Over the past two years a number of trials have been run and modifications made to the area. Both the slaughterfloor delegates and the Health & Safety Officers have, on the basis of the above, agreed that the system should be able to run with a 33 man team. This was documented by Mandi at this meeting and copies of the diagram given to those present.   Towards the end of the meeting Mandi then proceeded to detail an 'interim payment'  Brian Rowe queried the purpose of this payment. She said this was to assist us through the 'transition period'.  Brian put it to her that the payments for chain speeds etc were already detailed in the Agreement and that we were quite happy to work with the terms and conditions of the existing Agreement. The discussion continued - most of which is detailed below.   There was no movement until Paul Davey received an email from Mandi on Friday 31st  January.   "Subject: Castricum Brothers Automation Dear Paul, We are anxious to receive a response to our request to change the tallies with the implementation of the automatic head dropper. We have been forced to delay the installation of the equipment due to lack of agreement and are trying to arrange our maintenance plans for the next few months. In your newsletter to members of 29th Oct 2002 you have explained the accepted criteria for these types of changes, are we to understand that these have changed or is the agreement to change the tallies being withheld on the basis of our lack of resolution with a new EBA? Regards Mandi Bryant"   The following email was sent in response.   "Mandi Re Automation I am puzzled as to the response you are after. I understand that the Shops Committee has met with the company prior to Christmas on this issue. It was suggested by the Company that a separate Memorandum of Agreement be attached to the EBA to enable the Company to make unspecified changes to the Agreement. If the Agreement was current then this is possible and has been done before. What makes this impossible is that the Agreement which currently applies is the 2000 Agreement which has expired and is currently under negotiation. Clause 1.3 Duration and Renewal Reads "(c) Should negotiations not achieve agreement, the wages and conditions shall continue as at the date of expiration" The Shops Committee has expressed a willingness for the automation to proceed. They have given assurance that they will comply with the conditions of the 2000 EBA. The Company implied that they wanted a different set of conditions to apply. The Shops Committee invited the Company to put forward a working document/draft new EBA for negotiation if this was in fact the case. The Shops Committee not having received a reply on the matter from the Company have assumed (a) that the plans for automation have been cancelled (b) or that the plans for automation will proceed as under the wages and conditions of the 2000 Agreement. The Shops Committee again invites you to submit a new draft EBA for negotiation Note: if you plan to submit a draft EBA we would request that all changes be annotated in an appendix. Any changes in the body of the Agreement not annotated will be treated as per the 2000 Agreement. I would like to remind you that the appropriate format for EBA discussions is in the first instance through the Shops Committee."     After a Shops Committee meeting on the 7th February 2003 Brian Rowe, John Calthorpe and Rocco Calabro attended a Consultative Committee Meeting. During the meeting we were given a paper entitled "Company Agenda - 5 February 2003", which strangely we were instructed to ignore, as Mandi said that it was prepared prior to her receiving the email from the Union Office.   During this period Brian had been in contact with Paul Davey. It was decided that he should come out to the works to discuss a range of issues. The arranged date Tuesday the 8th of Feb was not acceptable due to the review and the Muslim slaughtermen celebrating the Hajj. It was decided to postpone till the 15th.   On 14th  February  there occurred a weird succession of events; firstly the foremen were informed of the Company's "agenda"??  Then the Shops Committee was invited to a meeting. We were given a copy of a paper entitled "EBA Proposal 14/2/03".  Mandi asked my opinion. I referred her back to the email from the Union Office. After listening to a spiel about how difficult this paper was to put together Mandi invited us to look at the document and report back.   Paul Davey and Brian Rowe took some time on the Tuesday to go through the proposal. Neither could make much sense of it. Having tried to work through some of Mandi's proposals in the past this one would have to qualify as the most vague.   We have continually asked Mandi to put any package offered in the form of a working EBA document. The reason for this is that Mandi will discuss amendments etc with the delegates expressing a particular form, and then later on document the so-called "agreed" amendments or changes in a completely different manner. At least with a finished document we can look at different scenarios and evaluate how they stack up.   We have attempted to get behind the philosophy of the proposal to gain some sort of understanding of what it all means. In short that understanding would have to be - when things go bad, the company wants to shift economic responsibility onto the workers.   The current proposal is essentially a rehash of proposals that have been rejected with good reason in the past.   Extended working days. This has been rejected primarily because of  health and safety concerns. The company has not supplied figures but anecdotal evidence suggests that while cut-type injuries have decreased the frequency of strain and long term muscle and bone injuries have increased significantly.   So called 37 man team.  As detailed above but worth repeating. There is an agreement for operating the weisand chain, agreed as part of the 2000 Agreement. This agreement was in two parts. 1) an unknown number of slaughtermen would be required to operate facility; and 2) that the stun and hang up positions be reclassified to labourers positions.   The chain speed would be increased as per the Agreement if as a result of these changes more slaughterman were needed. The current estimation as documented on 19th December 2002 is that they are not needed.   In discussions with the Company one thing becomes apparent: the Company has no idea what it really wants. They do want increases in production (as much as up to 7600 per day). We accept that but they cannot quantify what increments they require to achieve those increases nor when they require those increases to occur. The most important flaw in their proposals is the answer to a very basic question. What happens when the need for this level of production dies off? Everything in this proposal must be looked at with this question firmly in mind.   Mandi has said that the company does not intend to lower wages. We said that if she were fair dinkum about that then there would be no problem in striking what amounts to a salary (i.e. all payments - days wages, annual leave, RDOs, sick days and public holidays be the same daily rate).   You may remember in the last discussions reported at the shed meeting that the major sticking point to agreeing to their requests was seasonal workers.   We have no problem with seasonal workers if the following qualifications are met:   1)  the workers that are employed as seasonal workers be employed on the understanding that they may only be employed for a very short time and their employment may be ended at short notice; and more importantly 2)  that existing employees will not be disadvantaged monetarily by the employment of seasonal workers.   The Company was not prepared to give this guarantee.   With the new proposal they go further. They do not recognize that there will be seasonal workers. Those persons they intend to remain employed by the Company. To provide work for those people the expectation is that existing employees will in the case of Boning Room employees sacrifice leave (sound familiar?) or in the case of the Killfloor accept a reduction in available kill and therefore fewer earnings.   The concept of removing RDOs is unacceptable. They were fought for and won when the 5½ hour day was the norm. They were to be used for increased leisure time. Now that a usual work day is a full 435 mins (and much heavier work at that) on the Killfloor and 8 hours in the Boning Room the original arguments become more persuasive.   The reasoning that the company seems to be putting forward is absurd. It is akin to saying to an employee:  "Good on you, you have saved up and purchased a car - excellent, but we provided the income for it so we can tell you how, when and where you can use it!".    There is a bit of confusion about how the Agreement treats RDOs, Annual Leave, Sick Leave, stand- downs and retrenchments. This will be the subject of a later newsletter.  Also unacceptable is converting the overtime rate from 1.5 to 1.25, and converting the status of RDOs to Annual Leave, converting RDOs to cash, accepting a lower rate of pay for new starters, or any grandfather agreement.   Clearly the only truth in either of the papers dated 5th and 14th is the first sentence of the first paper. - "The continuing drought situation continues to cause difficulties for the supply of stock for our business"   It has been asked of many members what of our claims. It is our opinion that we will look at working EBA drafts submitted by the company then tailor our requests in line with the expectations of the members.   We realize that these are worrying times - we returned to work as realists under the drought situation. We will not allow the Company to use the drought against the workers. We will be patient in our resolve to achieve the aims of the members.