Pay dispute threatens Queensland abattoir

The meat processor Teys Australia has put staff at one of its Queensland plants on notice to accept an offered pay rise or the abattoir may close in a month.

Eight hundred people work at the abattoir at Beenleigh, south of Brisbane, which is currently slaughtering 1,400 head of cattle a day.

The company has been negotiating a new enterprise agreement for nine months with the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union.

Union spokesman Matthew Journeaux says the pay and conditions on offer are behind what workers are currently getting.

He says the closure threat has nothing to do with the negotiations, as the meat industry is in a healthy situation at the moment.

But Teys spokesman Tom Maguire says the closure option is real.

"We're going to look at all our options, and look, closing is really last resort for us.

"We are absolutely serious that we have to do something.

"In the last four years, the business has only returned one per cent to shareholders and the reality is that it costs us twice as much to process cattle in Australia as it does in Brazil and the US."

Mr Maguire says the company's best offer to workers is for a 3 per cent pay rise and some changes to work conditions.

He believes the company's other plants and its competitors have the capacity to take over the stock numbers that Beenleigh has been processing.

Source: ABC News, 12 July 2013