COCHLEAR CEO DR CHRIS ROBERTS TAKES ON AMWU
September 29th 2008 00:38
Thursday September 25, 2008
Daily news on ASX-listed biotechnology companies
* ASX DOWN, BIOTECHS UP: SUNSHINE HEART UP 10%, PSIVIDA DOWN 12%
* COCHLEAR CEO DR CHRIS ROBERTS TAKES ON AMWU
* SUNSHINE HEART WINS FDA REIMBURSMENT FOR C-PULSE
* XENOME BEGINS PHASE II TRIAL OF XEN2174 FOR ACUTE PAIN
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* SIRTEX WITHDRAWS FROM UWA APPEAL
* NEURODISCOVERY APPOINTS CHRIS MOYSES CEO
* RESONANCE HEALTH DIRECTOR DR ANDREW WALKER TO RESIGN
* BIO-MELBOURNE CHINA BIO-BREAKFAST
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COCHLEAR
Cochlear’s chief executive officer Dr Chris Roberts claims the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union has been running “smear campaigns” against his company.
“Since last year, the AMWU has targeted Cochlear in a series of smear campaigns to further the union’s own political agenda,” Dr Roberts said in a media release not sent to the ASX.
“The trigger for this was Cochlear moving its workers to individual common law contracts when a collective agreement expired,” Dr Roberts said.
He said the union refused to represent Cochlear workers in negotiations for an employee collective agreement, demanding a union collective agreement instead.
AMWU representatives were not available for comment.
Dr Roberts said that “just last month the Australian Industrial Relations Commission confirmed the validity of these individual contracts and that they could remain in place”.
He said “the AMWU continued its campaign against Cochlear by engineering for an employee, who happens to be a union delegate, to breach company policy”.
“That the AMWU filed an application in the Federal Court for an injunction preventing Cochlear from dismissing the employee, before Cochlear had even investigated the matter, let alone mentioned dismissal, indicates the AMWU’s ulterior motives,” Dr Roberts said.
He said the employee has been suspended on full pay, pending an investigation.
Dr Roberts said the union made “a baseless and trumped up discrimination complaint against Cochlear for using English in the workplace … [and] withdrew the case once the media interest in it subsided after the election”.
“We are sick of being used in baseless and ill-informed smear campaigns on behalf of the AMWU,” Dr Roberts said. “The fact of the matter is that we pay our manufacturing workers wages more than 40 percent above the award rate.”
“We have introduced world-class manufacturing processes which the union has on multiple occasions attempted to block,” Dr Roberts said.
“As a global leader in implantable hearing solutions and an Australian manufacturer we can ill afford to have our manufacturing processes dictated to us by the self-serving interests of the union,” he said
“We will continue to work closely with our employees to serve our mission which is to help people hear now and always,” Dr Roberts said.
Cochlear fell 65 cents or 1.09 percent to $58.78.
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