Harvey Beef has made a renewed push for employees to take a pay cut to avoid more job losses as questions emerge over the actions of its management and overseas-based owners.
The Australian Financial Review reports that Harvey Beef submitted an offer yesterday for a non-union workplace agreement that it said would cut the wages of about a quarter of its 340-strong workforce, although the meatworkers' union claimed the number would be far higher.
The company blamed the economic downturn and a fall in export demand for its decision last week to sack 160 employees, after workers rejected a workplace agreement that would have reduced their pay by 20pc.
A Harvey Beef spokesman said yesterday that the business had started experiencing difficulties only in mid-2008, when the US began securing a greater market share in Asia after US beef started recovering from a scare earlier this decade about mad cow disease.
Under the proposed workplace deal, about 75pc of workers would remain on the same wages or receive a higher rate, he said.
But the WA secretary of the Australian Meat Industries Employees Union, Graeme Haynes, said he believed it was wrong to say only 25pc of the workforce would have wages cut under the proposed agreement.
"It will be substantially higher than that," he said. "Some will get a higher hourly rate, but many will be worse off."
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