On March 20, a 40-strong community picket blocked trucks from entering the Coburg plant of Visy Industries, the world's largest packaging and recycling company. The picket was to protest the sacking of George Kyridis, a member of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) Visy is owned by the Pratt family and employs about 8000 people in Australia, New Zealand and North America.
Kyridis, who had been employed at Visy Coburg since 1999, was put on light duties as a forklift driver after he suffered a work injury in 2003. The company sacked him on February 7 after an assessor claimed he was not fulfilling his work duties. Kyridis was wrongly assessed as a machine operator instead of as a forklift driver.
Kyridis told Green Left Weekly that both his doctor's certificate and return-to-work plan were explicit about what he was able to do and excluded tasks associated with being a machine operator. \"They sacked me purely because I have an injury. I never got any warnings in the past related to my work performance.\"
Kyridis has held a vigil outside the factory gate (36-53 Charles Street, Coburg) since his sacking. He is encouraging supporters to visit him between 7.30am and midday.
All but 10 of the 150 workers at the plant have signed a letter of support for Kyridis. According to AMWU organiser Tony Mavromatis, Kyridis has been unlawfully dismissed. His case has been lodged with the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
Mavromatis also said that Kyridis' WorkCover claim \"was accepted and he was doing all of his required duties and hours at work. The company has breached the WorkCover agreement … the agreement that injured workers will be encouraged to come back to work.\"
The factory, he said, has \"another 20-30 employees who are injured and they are scared that the same thing that happened to George will happen to them\".
Mavrometis told GLW that two recent conciliation meetings brought no resolution because Visy has refused the union's demand that it reinstate Kyridis. \"Isn't it an absolute disgrace that a giant company like Visy, owned by the second richest-man in Australia, treats its workers so badly? They use the workers until they are injured, then sack them\", Mavromatis said.
Last November, Richard Pratt and the Visy group were fined $36 million — estimated at 0.75% of the Pratt family fortune — by the Federal Court for cheating customers and other companies out of about $700 million through a price-fixing cartel with \"rival\" packaging company Amcor.