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About 400 members of the National Union of Workers took a day's strike action on January 17, with a picket line at the Coles/Linfox warehouse facility in Truganina, on the western fringe of Melbourne.

The strike action was in support of the union's demand for a site agreement, something other Coles warehouses have. The workers are asking for a range of improvements in conditions, including an extra paid rest break per shift and a fair pay rise.

NUW delegate Mathew Davies told �鶹ӳ�� that the workers are demanding “fair pay for everyone.”

“You've got sheds around here that are earning more than us that are doing the same job. It's not right that they're getting paid more for what they do when we're doing exactly the same thing and get paid less than them.”

Davies said workers are paid at a base rate of $24.50 per hour for pick and pack warehouse work. “Other sheds are getting paid 26, 27 bucks an hour,” Davies said. “You could go up to 20, 22 kilos just to pick one box. So it's not chocolates all day every day, it's picking soft drink boxes, dog food and all that kind of stuff.”

“Warehouse workers at other Coles sites have, for example, additional paid rest pauses and policies to deal with extremely high temperature when the weather peaks like it is at the moment, in order to deal with health and safety concerns in an industry with high rates of injury,” NUW organiser Matt Toner said.

Following the morning picket line, workers went to protest and leaflet a Coles shopping centre to raise the issue more publicly.

The picket line is not the first protest in recent months at the Truganina site. On October 21, 200 workers protested and over 300 signed a petition demanding action against bullying. At the time, a Health and Safety representative and a union delegate had been stood down by management for speaking to the media after a casual worker was sacked “after she was sexually bullied at work,” according to the NUW. Davies said the issue is now “sort of fixed”.

At that time, the Age reported that Linfox “refuted the union's claims, and indicated the protests could be related to a bid by the NUW to steal members at the site from the Transport Workers Union.”

The Truganina site has only joined the NUW recently, with some workers remaining in the TWU. Toner told �鶹ӳ�� that unfortunately the TWU have refused to support the current strike action.

Davies promised that the campaign would continue after the one-day strike. “Rome wasn't built in a day. It will be a longer campaign,” he said.