Beleaguered Sugar Giant Wilmar received another blow today as two more staff with more than 14 years' experience each handed their notice in at the Invicta mill.
These latest departures come as a direct result of Wilmar's low wages and will leave Wilmar's largest mill critically short staffed.
One Wilmar worker at Invicta, who asked not to be named for fear of repercussions, said the departing workers will lead to the mill struggling to maintain quality and reliability throughout the crush.
"I fear the process side at Invicta will suffer this year as managers are pushing new starters to get signed off with only 3-4 weeks training," they said.
"They still haven't filled all positions in the fugals, mills or lab, it is a sh*t show for coverage. People are burned out already."
AWU Northern District Secretary Jim Wilson said these reports confirmed what workers, cane growers and the local community had been saying for some time.
"Wilmar's greed is slowly strangling the sugar communities of our region."
"We have also heard that Wilmar has had to send a boiler operator and a boiler assistant from the Inkerman mill to Proserpine because they don't have anyone trained to do the job down there," Mr Wilson said.
"This is on top of Kalamia Mill having to stop crushing for six hours a day, every day, because they can't get staff to work there."
"On top of that, this week a seasonal worker quit after one day because their previous employer offered them more money to come back."
"Despite Wilmar's transparent attempts at spin, this is a full-blown crisis playing out in real time."
Mr Wilson said it was time for Wilmar's senior executives to put their egos aside and come back to the table with a genuine, fair offer.
"We saw another PR disaster from Wilmar this week when their chief spin doctor went to Canberra and tried to talk over the top of an Australian senator because she dared to say publicly that Wilmar should offer their employees a fair deal."
"This is the level of arrogance our members are dealing with," Mr Wilson said.
"It's time for Wilmar to send an adult into negotiations to get this resolved."
