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July 13th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Legal action over an industrial dispute at a Coles warehouse in Melbourne has escalated, with the site’s managers applying to the Victorian Supreme Court for an injunction to stop a blockade by workers.
Hundreds of striking workers had won the right from Fair Work Australia (FWA) on Friday to continue picketing outside the grocery chain’s Somerton warehouse.
But Toll Group, which manages the Coles site, hopes to end the blockade by applying for the injunction, which will be heard on Saturday afternoon.
“The commissioner made it clear she thinks that we should talk to the Supreme Court and that’s what we’re going to do now,” Andrew Ethell, Toll Group’s corporate affairs general manager, told reporters after the company’s failed Fair Work bid to shut down the picket line.
“It’s a blatantly unlawful blockade.
“They (the union) think it’s hurting us. In reality it’s hurting our workforce who really just want to go back to work, earn a living and pay off their mortgages.”
National Union of Workers (NUW) members have blocked trucks from entering or leaving the Coles warehouse since Tuesday as they fight for better pay and conditions.
Toll Group had argued at the Fair Work hearing on Friday that the picket constituted unfair conduct and undermined the process of collective bargaining.
But the NUW said its blockade, while allegedly illegal, is not unfair, not by definition a form of industrial action according to the Fair Work Act and therefore beyond the tribunal’s power to dismantle it.
FWA Commissioner Anna Lee Cribb agreed, ruling in the union’s favour.
“I am not persuaded that picketing is an element of the bargaining process,” she said.
Toll told the hearing it did not object to workers taking lawful industrial action, but said the picket line was preventing as many as 150 of the site’s 600 employees who wanted to return to work from doing so.
Justice Cribb also ordered that Toll delay a vote on its pay offer to workers for 21 days and for the two parties to meet three times for negotiations in the next 14 days.
NUW assistant state secretary Gary Maas said the union was committed to undertaking talks with Toll but repeated calls for Coles to join the talks.
“We implore Toll and particularly Coles to come to the bargaining table and start making a genuine effort to resolve this dispute,” he told reporters.
A Coles spokesman said the industrial dispute was having little impact on stock levels in the company’s stores.
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