Lion has issued a forceful denial to union claims that its Brisbane brewery is shutting down.
United Voice coordinator Damien Davie told AAP this week that staff were notified by management in June the Castlemaine Perkins brewery in Milton would close if negotiations to scrap full time jobs in favour of labour-hire, part-time and casual positions were unsuccessful.
“The continued push to bring in labour-hire employees and casualise the workforce is the main reason cited by management when threatening workers with closing the plant,” he said.
A spokesperson for Lion said: “These recent claims are false; we are actually hiring five more permanent people right now. There are no job losses.
“In fact, there will be pay offers on the table – on top of the best pay and work conditions in brewing in Queensland.
“We simply want to the ability bring on additional people in summer when we brew more beer. This is how every other seasonal manufacturer operates, but our current agreement is confusing and prohibitive.”
XXXX production not moving from Queensland
XXXX Brewery director Irene Bell also dismissed claims by Davie that Lion is gradually moving production of its iconic beer out of Queensland to other states.
“A large proportion of XXXX is now made at the Tooheys Brewery in Lidcombe, Western Sydney,” Davie told AAP. “XXXX gold is also made at West End in South Australia and in some circumstances even at the Boags Brewery in Tasmania.”
Bell told The Courier-Mail the claims are “false” and says Queenslanders should be “outraged” the union would make up the allegations “about our iconic brewery”.
Beer bosses continuing union woes
Last year, Carlton and United Breweries (CUB) faced a similiar stoush with the ETU and AMWU during a dispute relating to a change of outsourced maintenance contracts at its Abbotsford brewery.
“Claims CUB sacked 55 workers without notice are untrue,” CUB said in a statement. “CUB has not employed maintenance workers since 2009, when those impacted by the services being outsourced were paid redundancies of $150,000 – $200,000.
“In June this year CUB announced a change of outsourced providers. Anyone losing their job is not an issue taken lightly – that’s why CUB gave six months’ notice of the end of the contract and people were paid redundancies by their employer.
“We are proud of our brands and of our employees – our people continue to produce high quality and much loved beers.”
The CUB protesters initiated a boycott of CUB products among some pubs until the dispute was resolved.
