THE fate of King island Dairy is still up in the air, seven months after owners Saputo Dairy Australia (SDA) announced a review of the operation.
The global dairy giant’s strategic review is progressing, a company spokesperson said this week.
SDA announced the review with an option of selling in November, 2023. The Courier has asked the company for: the review completion date; if a sale of King Island Dairy proceeds, the sale/ buyer cycle timeline and; if a buyer is not found during the on-the-market sale period, what will the company then do?
A Saputo spokesperson said the SDA “timeline is flexible” and that the company would keep employees informed. The review is part of Saputo’s strategy to cut operational expenses in its Australian network.
Saputo acquired the specialty cheese business Lion Dairy & Drinks Pty Ltd in 2019 for $280 million on a cash-free and debtfree basis, which included the two manufacturing facilities in Burnie and King Island, Twenty-four maintenance workers at the Canadian corporation’s Burnie site operations have been in dispute with the company for more than eight months and last week stopped work with no return-to-work date.
The union said Saputo pays the Burnie workers 21 per cent less than the same workers at their rural Victorian sites. In response to the stop-work, Saputo has flown in workers from Germany to continue the site maintenance.
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union organiser Michael Wickham said Saputo’s latest move reinforces the unfair treatment of Tasmanian workers.
“It’s bad enough that the company is trying to make disparity worse with a cut to real wages, only offering 4.5 per cent, but now the company is spending more money to continue this dispute with scab labour than it would cost to do the right and fair thing,” Mr Wickham said.
“Not only have the company flown workers in from Germany and is offering blank cheques to local companies to try and cover the strike, they are employing gutter tactics.”
Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union state secretary Michael Anderson said that the company had sent ‘propaganda’ about negotiations by express post to the home addresses of striking workers, a move he called “anti-Tasmanian”.
“The North West Coast is a small community and deserves better from a multinational company that has depressed wages of working families for years, like many other big employers,” Mr Anderson said.
“But Saputo’s step to send propaganda by express post to try and cause problems at home for families already under the pressure of depressed wages and dealing with a strike is a new low.
“It’s an old, dirty, and failed union-busting tactic,” Mr Anderson said.
“Similarly, local contractors have been offered work at the site at any cost, which has only served to fire up the workers more for what’s fair.”
Saputo said that the company has made repeated attempts to schedule bargaining meetings since mid-May. Saputo is understood to have scheduled a meeting with the unions’ national bodies in Sydney on Friday.