Australia's biggest potato grower is leading a national push to pay employees like Kay Rault who work in packing and storage sheds located off farm sites the same rates as lower-paid farm workers.
In Sydney to give evidence to the Fair Work Commission hearing of Mitolo Group's application to have the Horticulture Award extended to store workers who handle fresh produce, Ms Rault who grades potatoes and onions at Mitolo's South Australian facility said it was hard to make ends meet on her wages.
"If this change gets through, things could get a lot harder for people like me and my workmates," she said.
"Why should big companies be able to change the law just because it suits them?"
Ms Rault's employer, Mitolo Group, a major supermarket supplier, is among companies backed by the Australian Industry Group which is putting their case to the Fair Work Commission.
As a member of the National Union of Workers which opposes the industry push to extend the Horticulture Award to include workers in packing and storage sheds located away from farms, Ms Rault said: "Just because Mitolo owns farms, doesn't mean that Mitolo only employs farm workers".
The NUW says the Storage Services Award, which pays higher rates than the Horticulture Award, should apply to workers in storage facilities located outside the farm gate.
The Australian Industry Group says imposition of the Storage Services Award for off-site packing and storage workers "would impose crippling cost increases" on businesses in the horticulture industry.
"The fact that the NUW may be able to identify a couple of businesses that have decided to apply the award in response to NUW claims, does not alter the fact that the Horticulture Award is the one that is applied very widely throughout the Horticulture Industry," the AIG says.
The AIG argues that activities outside the "farm gate" do not literally refer to a physical location or "gate". It says the term relates to work carried out by the producer up to the first point of sale from the producer to its customers.
"The concept has no relevance to the location of work," it says.
NUW secretary Tim Kennedy said the Mitolo application to extend the Horticulture Award to workers outside the farm gate could see up to 8 per cent cut from pay packets and the loss of other entitlements.
"Store workers handling fresh produce would continue to do the same work, every day of the week, except they would be paid less. It's just wage theft. A worker on level 1 could lose more than $60 a week," he said.
"Under the Horticulture Award, employers currently do not pay casual workers anything extra for overtime or weekend work. So while the union movement is campaigning hard to protect penalty rates for workers across Australia, these big employers are quietly trying to take away penalty rates from potentially thousands of casual store workers.
"Under the Horticulture Award, employers regularly require workers to work for piece rates. This means people being paid for each piece of fruit they pick. Often piece rate workers cannot even earn the legal minimum wage in this country. This problem needs to be fixed, not expanded."
Mitolo declined to comment until the Fair Work Commission has decided the matter.
