Sydney Technology Industry With HP Links Lifts Workers Rights
A computer packing company in New South Wales, that was informing employees only the night before whether they had work for the next day and shift time, has agreed that permanent employment for it’s employees should be offered and that the state of the working factory should be lifted to with in industry and OH&S guidelines.
The company is Foxteq factory in Rydalmere which was outed last year as an extremely poor employer history that gave little notice to workers of when or if they would have work. Most of the workers are from disadvantaged backgrounds and had little choice but to put up with this de-facto arrangement.
The labour hiring to the company is performed by an external labour sourcing agency and has sourced almost, if not the whole, work force at the factory as casual employees. The main function of the factory is to prepare for delivery a number of Hewlett-Packard branded computer systems, who are destined for such high profile clients as Department of Defence, NSW Fire Brigades and also various banks to name a few.
Sources from some of the workers mention that some messages were not received until even after 8pm before the next day’s shift started. Not knowing how long their shifts were to be, some workers attended and only worked for 4 hours or under, then leaving them in a state of limbo about when, if, and how long they would be needed for the next day.
In a positive change though the new labour hire company Resco, having being contracted by Foxteq have negotiated an agreement with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union to the benefit of the employees in the factories workforce. The workers now have options to choose from such as permanent full-time or part time status, and improvement to working conditions at the factory, and also union delegates which employees can elect themselves.
It is believed some high level pressuring direct from HP assisted with the change. Particularly damaging to HP were revelations that Foxteq is the sister company of manufacturer Foxconn which has been chided before for it’s reported poor employee relations though in roads to improvements have been laid.…