3 September 2015

Bunnings workers vote for strike action

Workers at Bunnings Mount Maunganui are walking off the job at 1pm today after learning that the company is proposing a change which will remove the right to determine their start and finish times, says FIRST Union Retail and Finance Secretary Maxine Gay.

“While most companies are scrambling to remove this sort of insecure work model, Bunnings is taking off in the other direction.”

“Under our current collective agreement Bunnings can only alter start and finish times under mutual agreement with the worker, but now the company is trying to remove mutual agreement and insert a clause that will allow management to chop and change those times at will,” says Gay.

“This means that a worker might be guaranteed 40 hours per fortnight, but then find that start and finish times chop and change. One week it might be Monday to Thursday and the next week it could be Thursday to Sunday.”

“This is the sort of work model that the country has rejected, but Bunnings is trying to introduce it by stealth. Workers need certainty,” says Gay.

“Bunnings workers will resist any effort to impose insecure hours. More strikes are sure to follow.”

ENDS

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