Truckies strike in job fight

ANGRY truckies walked off the job on Friday after negotiations with their employers at Toll Tasmania turned sour.

Nearly 100 Transport Workers’ Union members went on strike at the Toll headquarters in Brighton, alongside more than 300 other Toll workers across the state.

Union delegate John Leamey, who has worked for Toll for more than 17 years, said the company’s proposed enterprise agreement put all of their jobs at risk.

Mr Leamey said the agreement put loyal, full-time truck drivers at risk of being replaced by lower-paid workers on casual and fixed-term contracts.

“We’re worried that, heading into the future, Toll indicated that they were going to force the issue with the casualisation of the workforce and slowly but surely getting rid of permanent employees,” he said.

“This is all about job security and keeping the terms and conditions that the people before us have fought for.”

Fellow truckie Pat Spaulding said the offer put forward by Toll was unacceptable, and that they would strike even harder unless better conditions were offered.

“We don’t want to be on strike, but if Toll gets what they want, we lose all our terms and conditions. We won’t have job security that we’re afforded under the EBA,” Mr Spaulding said.

Toll’s Global Express president Alan Beacham said they would not be swayed by union “bullying”, insisting that their terms were very reasonable and Toll had already offered to raise their wages by a further 2 per cent.

“Toll will not be bullied by the union,” Mr Beacham said.