HS Fresh workers left out in the cold

ABOUT 30 workers from Tasmanian salad leaf producer Houston Farms have been made redundant after the company’s recent sale to mainland firm PM Fresh. 

The announcement came during a meeting with HS Fresh employees on Monday morning. 

The meeting informed employees directly engaged in farming and processing operations that their positions would be made redundant as of Wednesday evening. 

Australian Workers Union (AWU) secretary Robert Flanagan attended the meeting and confirmed that PM Fresh will assume control of operations from Thursday. 

Mr Flanagan noted that PM Fresh will not directly employ the current staff and instead, current employees will have the option to fill out a waiver hire form to provide labour in the farming and processing operations if they wish to remain employed. 

He urged current HS Fresh employees to apply to PM Fresh if they are interested in continuing to work at the Tasmanian operation, however positions are not guaranteed. 

“The difficulty for the workers is now ultimately they are now out of work and although HS Fresh is giving them two weeks’ pay in lieu of notice, that’s it,” he said. 

“They’ll be out of work, and it will be some time before they receive their entitlements from the Federal Government” 

At this stage, no Houston Farms employees working in the farm and processing section have been kept on. 

“Administrative staff seem be in a different situation and be able to apply directly to PM Fresh for employment,” Mr Flanagan said. 

“What happens is that there is an enterprise agreement in place for farming and processing workers that does not apply to labour hire people so what will happen is, if people choose to work for the labour hire firm, they will work over the terms of the horticultural industry award rather than the enterprise agreement.” 

Former Houston Farm employees will be able to apply for paid entitlements through the Federal Government from the entitlements guarantee scheme. 

“The federal process and application forms can be quite confronting, so we are working with each employee to help them prepare the form and get it into federal government,” Mr Flanagan said. 

HS Fresh has been contacted for further comment