UCL workers take lightning strike action

More than thirty EPMU members at United Containers Ltd took a lightning two hour strike and picket action on Tuesday to protest the fact they can be forced to work an 8 hours span at any time between 6am and 9pm without overtime or penal rates.

Some of the workers have had no pay rise in two years and are currently in negotiations for their first collective agreement.

“UCL relies on having overtime on tap in order to meet its contracts but the span of ordinary hours is so great that workers there can be made to work unsociable hours without any recognition of that.”

“Shift work and on-call overtime has a big effect on people’s ability to organise their lives and can cause serious health issues as we’ve seen with a recent study linking shift work to higher cancer rates. The very least UCL can do is to make sure their workers are properly compensated through a decent overtime threshold.

“UCL needs to realise that if they want to keep these skilled workers they need to treat them with dignity and so far they’ve failed to do so. The failure to have any decent controls on hours of work is symptomatic of UCL’s ongoing lack of respect for its workers’ health and safety.”

UCL’s core business is refitting and maintaining shipping containers. Following the industrial action they have approached the EPMU for mediation.