Workers Complain About Zinfra Exclusion

Media release – CEPU, 20 January 2026

Heavy-Handed Exclusion Exposes Zinfra’s True Agenda in Same Job Same Pay Dispute

CEPU members employed by Zinfra in Tasmania have been excluded of their workplace for taking part in minor, lawful partial work bans, including a ban on reading non-essential emails and text messages.

The company’s response has been grossly disproportionate.

Workers remained ready, willing, and available to perform all other duties, including critical planned works. Instead of engaging constructively, Zinfra chose to escalate the dispute by excluding workers, deliberately delaying planned works and punishing employees for standing up for fairness.

This heavy-handed tactic lays bare Zinfra’s true intentions: to intimidate workers and crush the Same Job Same Pay campaign that has strong support from employees and has been endorsed in principle by the Tasmanian Parliament.

“These workers were not on strike. They were not refusing to work,” a CEPU Organiser Adrian Shaw said.

“They simply exercised limited bans, and Zinfra responded by pulling the pin entirely. That is not industrial relations, it’s industrial bullying.”

At the heart of the dispute is a familiar and deeply unfair reality for Tasmanian workers: being paid up to 30 per cent less than mainland workers for doing the same job, with the same skills, qualifications and responsibilities.

Time and again, Tasmanian workers are treated as second-class citizens by mainland-based corporations that are happy to rely on their labour, but are not prepared to pay them fairly.

“This is a pattern Tasmanians know all too well,” Adrian Shaw said.

“Mainland companies come in, extract the value of local labour, and then try to dictate terms, expecting Tasmanian workers to accept less simply because of their postcode.”

Zinfra’s exclusion decision will only strengthen the resolve of workers who are demanding nothing more radical than fairness and equality.

Same job must mean same pay, no excuses, no loopholes and no intimidation.

The CEPU calls on Zinfra to end the exclusion tactic immediately, and engage in genuine negotiations to resolve this dispute in a way that respects Tasmanian workers and the principle of Same Job Same Pay.

Editor’s note: this has been edited since first published to alter wording that ambiguously had both common meaning and specific meaning under the Fair Work Act.