AMIEU Victoria Officers

Paul Conway
Secretary

Paul was elected as Union Organiser in November 1997. Prior to this he had worked at Herds for 17 years. He started work on the mutton chain at M.C.Herd in Corio in November 1980. After three months he moved on to the beef line. He worked at Herds for 17 years. He was elected as the Herd’s Health and Safety Representative, the Union Shed Delegate and also as Herd’s members’ Committee of Management representative for a number of years.
Paul has been trained in Occupational Health & Safety, Train the Trainer, Mintrac, Workplace Assessor, WorkCover Conciliation and Computers.
He was an Organiser for 7 years. Then for a year from November 2004 Paul stepped out of Organising and became a Health and Safety Representatives Support Officer. When Paul Davey decided to retire, Paul Conway returned to his broad industrial role and he was elected as the Assistant Secretary.

In October 2011 Graham Bird, Secretary, retired and Paul became Secretary. He has been elected as Secretary repeatedly since then.

Adam Blyth
Assistant Secretary

In April 2018 Adam Blyth joined the Victorian Branch as an Organiser after 17 years as a union member in the meat industry. In recent years he has worked at Tasman Meats/JBS Swift in the lamb boning room.
In this time he has been a union delegate for the lamb room. He was employed as a boner/ boner trainer and assessor. For the last 8 years he has operated the bandsaw as well as training workers on the use of the bandsaw.
In the quiet periods in lamb production Adam has boned and sliced beef. He has also developed significant knowledge of work on the lamb kill floor.
Adam has been involved in the production side of operations with Aus Meat. This has involved production and planning, export, cold storage, OHS and on the job training of knife hands and labourers.
Adam looks forward to meeting many more meatworkers and assisting AMIEU members with many issues. He is taking over from Barrie Chalkley in a number of the abattoirs.

Baden Collisson
Organiser

In May 2018 Baden Collisson who has worked as a cabinet attendant in meat rooms at Coles for the last 9 years has become an Organiser.

Before going into the retail industry Baden had worked as a labourer. He had been a farm hand where he learned to slaughter sheep, raised on the farm he worked and lived on. He had also worked in an abattoir for two years where he started off as a labourer and got experience in packing, then moved into trimming and had started to learn boning before moving on.

His experience in labouring around the traps gave Baden a good understanding of the need to have a strong union. This led to him becoming a Coles’ meat room delegate about 18 months ago and a member of the AMIEU Committee of Management in 2017, following in the footsteps of an ‘in-law’.
The other commitment that Baden has in common with many of the people who have been organisers in the AMIEU is martial arts, as well as unionism.