Consider being locked out of your workplace indefinitely because some workers participated in just one work stoppage.
That is the harsh reality facing 302 workers at Opal’s Maryvale paper mill in the Latrobe Valley.
Opal’s unprecedented action has reignited calls from the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) to change imbalanced industrial laws that allow employers to initiate unfair worker lockouts.
ACTU Secretary Sally McManus said lockout laws needed to change to prevent employers from “abusing their power”.
“[Lockouts have] a devastating impact on people,” she told The Australian.
“In the rest of the OECD, lockouts are very rare.
“They don’t allow them or where they do, it has to be proportionate (to industrial action).
“In Australia, you don’t need any proportionality or anything,” she said.
“You can lock people out forever if you want, even if the workers haven’t taken any industrial action.
“I think we should ban them, but at a minimum, there should be a proportionality test,” she said.
Opal lockout in third week
Before the lockout, CFMEU Manufacturing Division members had endured 14 bargaining meetings where the employer’s only proposition was to cut working conditions.
With the employer refusing to budge, seven union members participated in authorised industrial action in the form of a six-hour stop work.
The employer responded with an ongoing lockout of all 302 union members, now in its third week.
The CFMEU Manufacturing Division described the lockout as “completely disproportionate to the action taken” and “a total disregard for the employees, their families and communities”.
School employers also use unfair laws to their advantage
School employers in the non-government sector are not above using unfair laws in response to authorised industrial action by employees.
In August 2023, some IEU members in Queensland Catholic schools participated in a five-minute work stoppage and imposed a limited range of work bans.
The employer responded by docking an entire day’s pay from any member who took both actions.
IEU-QNT Secretary Terry Burke said, at the time, no Australian Catholic school employer had ever responded so harshly to employee industrial action.
“The employer response was shameful because it was so disproportionate to the limited industrial actions taken by employees,” he said.
“Withholding a full day’s pay and telling employees they were ‘not required’ at work because they participated in limited work bans effectively locked those staff out of the workplace.
“The work bans were simple actions like not answering emails outside work hours or taking an uninterrupted lunch break.
“Any reasonable person would find the employer’s response to those low-level actions unfair and disproportionate,” he said.
Mr Burke said it was clear that laws around employer industrial action, including lockouts, needed to be rebalanced.
“In a fair-minded country like Australia, employers shouldn’t be able to lockout employees indefinitely in response to the mildest inconvenience caused by industrial action,” he said.
“It’s time to put a stop to unfair employer lockouts.”
