Unions demand super funds pull out of CSL

Unions declare workers’ funds should not be used to finance CSL’s corporate bastardry.

CSL chief executive Paul McKenzie.

Unions have urged eight superannuation funds to review millions of dollars of investment in Australia’s third biggest company, CSL, after exposure of the vaccine and blood products supplier’s plan to shift workers on to lower pay. 

The Electrical Trades Union and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union told the funds, including Cbus and AustralianSuper, that CSL’s strategy, revealed by The Australian, went well beyond normal industrial bargaining and was a “highly irregular” attack on the livelihoods of workers.

They urged the funds to review their “significant investment” in CSL, claiming its conduct was at odds with their commitment to only invest in companies with good environmental, social, and governance management.

“It represents a concerted effort to diminish the labour rights of its workforce and presents a poor grasp of the social and governance concerns relevant to a company of CSL’s size and sophistication,” they said.

Confidential company documents reveal CSL devised a secret plan to shift workers on to lower pay and conditions and make them redundant if they refused to relocate to the biotech giant’s new $800m hi-tech plant in Melbourne

A nine-page internal strategy document, obtained by The Australian, disclosed how CSL’s vaccines arm, Seqirus, canvassed in 2020 how to “reset the industrial landscape” by negotiating an enterprise agreement on “reduced terms” with a small group of new employees before applying the deal to workers transferring from the company’s existing Parkville site to the new Banksia facility in Tullamarine.

ETU Victorian secretary Troy Gray said the unions had demanded the superannuation funds withdraw their investments because workers’ funds should not be used to finance the “corporate bastardry we have seen at CSL”.

“The real question for the superannuation funds is does it fit in with their ethical practices to invest in this company,” he said.

He said three funds had responded to the letter to say the union concerns had been escalated, meaning they could be examined by their boards.

He said he would be contacting union directors of the funds over the Christmas period. If the funds did not withdraw their investments, the union would examine holding protest rallies outside fund offices to pressure them.

“CSL’s agenda is to effectively wind back Australian workers’ wages and conditions, how does that fit in with the investment practices for workers’ superannuation being invested into CSL?

“The two can’t go together. You can’t be investing workers’ money into a company that is attacking workers at the same time. It isn’t ethical.”

A CSL spokesman said “It is disappointing that the unions continue to mischaracterise CSL and the spirit in which we engage with our people”.

“The concerns the unions have raised are based on an old document outlining a range of options, which we have explained was not endorsed by the leadership team,” he said

“We are in regular dialogue with our shareholders including the super funds who understand that our goal is always to achieve an agreement that is attractive to our highly-skilled employees, and one that allows us to reliably deliver our life saving medicines and vaccines to those counting on us.”

Mr Gray said the CSL strategy “may represent unlawful adverse action under the Fair Work Act”, and the company had launched a “witch hunt” into how the internal strategy document got into the public domain.