Workers at Nyrstar’s Hobart smelter have voted to take protected action in support of a log of claims for a new Enterprise Agreement for the plant.

The secret ballot was held on December 15, supervised by the Australian Electoral Commission.

The CFMEU and AWU requested an order for the ballot, after three years of negotiation with the company had failed to reach agreement on the EBA.

‘Nyrstar employees sought the secret ballot because they were fed up with the company’s unwillingness to genuinely bargain about their EBA,’ said CFMEU Organiser Marshall Reeves.

‘Nyrstar refuses to bargain around a log of claims and continues to push performance based pay, despite being repeatedly told by employees they don’t want a bar of it.’  

In a return of 68.2% of the workforce, employees have endorsed 17 different kinds of protected action for the coming weeks.

The employees will decide when they want to commence protected action and the unions will give the company the required three working days’ notice.

For more about this story and others from around Tasmanian construction sites, download the latest issue of the CFMEU journal, the Tasmanian Bluey.