The bosses of Padre Coffee are each earning five times the annual wages of their employees but won’t agree to conditions of safety and respect in the workplace. Now they’ve locked out workers for daring to speak up.
At a warehouse in Brunswick East, teams of roasters at Padre Coffee are forging their careers preparing some of the world's best beans for your morning brew. For their efforts roasting and packing tens of thousands of kilos of coffee, these workers are paid just $55,000 a year, while the profits they generate support executive salaries soaring above $300,000.
Corporate coffee giant Seven Miles bought out the family-owned business in April 2022.
Since then, conditions and treatment of staff have rapidly deteriorated under a top-down corporate structure where the Padre Coffee team have grown increasingly alarmed by low wages, increased workloads, and a lack of safety and respect in the workplace.
Workers at the roastery joined the United Workers Union in mid-2024, launching into negotiating an Enterprise Agreement to secure fairer conditions for all staff. At the end of 2024 Seven Miles made some employees redundant in an already diminished and overworked environment, effectively increasing the pressure on those remaining. Those workers left have been refused meaningful conversation and action in improving redundancy conditions or to even consider a single wage increase in bargaining.
Josie from the Young Workers Centre spoke to Padre Coffee Workers about why they joined their union and are fighting back. 💪 💪 💪
Padre’s employees are standing up for all Victorian workers impacted by unjust workplace conditions. Beyond their wage claim, staff are uniting around best-practice equal opportunity principles.
Workers are asking for:
1. Paid gender affirmation leave. Trans people are subject to significant financial, social and emotional costs in accessing affirming healthcare, and no one should have to leave the workplace to transition safely.
2. Paid Sorry Business leave for First Nations workers.
3. Recognising diverse family and kinship structures, especially for First Nations staff.
4. A heat allowance for when warehouse conditions become extreme.
5. Union rights, including the right to representation and basic recognition in the Agreement.
These demands are all about dignity for workers, and each have been rejected outright and dismissed as unnecessary by the employer. The bosses refuse to listen to the expertise of the workers – who know better than anyone what is and isn’t necessary for their workplace.
Faced with intransigence the workers applied for protected industrial action, deciding their first step would be to wear union t-shirts at work. Their employers flipped out – and have said any workers wearing union t-shirts won’t be paid for their shifts! This is effectively a lockout: “work without expressing your opinion or don’t work at all."
How this will play out in notoriously progressive and union-proud Brunswick remains to be seen.
Padre’s Coffee workers are proud to contribute to a significant coffee establishment in Brunswick East. Padre Coffee and Seven Miles are demonstrating a serious lack of respect for workers in refusing to negotiate safe working conditions and are sending a harmful message about who belongs in our workplaces.
Padre Coffee workers deserve visibility. safety and equality in the workplace. The bosses at Seven Miles are staining Padre Coffee’s name, burning the roast, and leaving a bitter aftertaste. Stand in solidarity with Padre’s workers in Brunswick fighting for inclusive change, safety and respect in the workplace. ✊✊✊
Resources:
Young Workers Centre | Solidarity with Padre Coffee workers
Common Ground | Death and Sorry Business
Fair Work Ombudsman | First Nations people - Do you need time off for Sorry Business fact sheet
Equality Australia | Trans, gender diverse and intersex workers protected under new fair work bill – October 2022
Workplaces for Women | Hospo: A High-Risk Industry survey