StarTrack workers have voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking strike action if the company refuses to provide job security guarantees including the same pay and conditions for labour hire workers, caps on the use of lower paid outside hire, and offering work to employees before it is contracted out.
The 90% vote to take action provides protection under the Fair Work Act for approximately 2000 StarTrack TWU members - almost 70% of the total workforce - to go on strike.
It comes as negotiations over workplace agreements at several major transport operators mounted attacks on good, secure jobs, forcing thousands of workers to pursue the right to take industrial action. A protected action ballot opened at Linfox today and another began at Bevchain on Wednesday. FedEx workers are currently voting, until 5pm, Friday 17 September.
The attacks on job security coincide with a rise in work being contracted out to lower paid workers. StarTrack outside hire volumes have jumped to 70% of the total workforce in yards in SA and 50% in Queensland and Canberra, while only one in every eight workers servicing air freight in WA is a direct employee.
