Abbot gov pressured SPC to cut wages

SPC management must have been wondering WTF Abbott was on about. Just to clarify this, the award wage is the absolute minimum that you can be paid under the award, and it's usually much lower than the real wages that people get in industries. You have things like an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) that's negotiated onsight. Productivity increases are gained in return for pay increases. Many times these EBA negotiations can get very tense, even legal strike action being taken by workers during this negotiation period. Usually EBA's cover 2-3 years, and once finished everyone breaths a sigh of relief. Workers don't enjoy striking but sometimes it's the only thing left to do to get the negotiations going again.

So after all that, the wages and conditions are all settled, the productivity increases are in place, and on with the job. You can imagine therefore the absolute impossibility of the company in meeting Abbott's demands even if it wanted to. For a start it'd be illegal as you can't just chuck out an EBA and slash wages during the life of an EBA; the EBA is a legally binding agreement between both parties. A legal document if you will. Other than that what fuckin worker is going to agree to a 40% wage cut? Abbot appears to have no idea of the law or reality. He seems to be living in some kind of Lieberal psychosis:  

The Abbott government pressed SPC Ardmona to slash pay for workers by as much as 40 per cent under a radical bailout plan for the food processor. 

Three union officials told Fairfax Media they had meetings with SPC Ardmona managing director Peter Kelly before Christmas in which Mr Kelly said he was being pressured by the Abbott government to put workers on the award if the company wanted a $25 million subsidy. 

The government has been pushing struggling companies such as Toyota and SPC Ardmona to overhaul their workplace agreements as it has repeatedly warned about high wages, which has become a key political issue. 

That is despite the wage price index growing at just 2.6 per cent last year, the slowest growth in the 16-year history of the series. Read more  

Again, why didn't Abbott carry on like this when he was bailing out the farmers? Demanding the workers on the farm cop a 40% wage cut before there was any drought relief?