AMWU members at Omic Australia’s North Melbourne laboratory are standing their ground in tough negotiations for a union collective agreement.

The workers are among the first in the science industry to get organised.

Caroline O’Keefe, a pesticide chemist and AMWU member at Omic, says she believes the workers are right to stand up for better conditions and standards in their inustry.

“A lot of people in the industry are fed up with the conditions we have to work under, and I think that a lot of people are starting to talk more about unions and how joining can help,” she said.

Nonetheless, the workers know the fight won’t be easy.

“Management is really taking a hard line. They just keep presenting us with the same agreement over and over again with no changes, which is just the bits they like from the Award, and they’ve put in other things that are actually worse for us”, said Caroline.

“We went on a one day strike, and the company responded by saying that from this point onwards, if we strike again they will lock us out for twice as long.”

Despite Omic’s attempt to quash workers’ determination to win a fair agreement, Caroline says her workmates are resolute:

“We are ready to keep fighting. The workers want to know what their options are - like, do we have to keep striking over and over? 

“But we do know a lot more about our rights now. A lot of people are now reading the Awards on their own.

“We found that the copies of the Award here on site were from 1998, they [Omic] hadn’t bothered to update them for about a decade! So a lot of people have been printing them off the internet, finding the most up to date copies and finding out information for themselves and taking that home to read at night.”

AMWU organiser, Dave Vroland, has been supporting the Omic workers through negotiations and says that the workers should be proud.

“Our members at Omic have shown an incredible degree of solidarity and unity”, he said.

“They’re standing up to a profitable employer who would rather pay money to lawyers and threaten employees with lockouts than negotiate any level of wage increases.

“Omic are treating their employees with absolute contempt and members are right to stand up for decent pay and fair conditions.”