Sydney Water workers go on strike over job cuts

SYDNEY - Around 1,000 Sydney Water workers walked off the job for a four-hour stop-work meeting on Thursday, local media reported.

The Australian Services Union (ASU) New South Wales (NSW) branch said the walkout was organized after 335 jobs were cut at the state-owned corporation and negotiations over new enterprise agreements stopped.

Staff stopped their work at 11:30 am (local time) on Thursday to attend the meeting at Parramatta Stadium in Sydney, voting on holding a series of rolling strikes from mid-October, the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported.

"Sydney Water wants to halve the redundancy pay it gives to people ... obviously it's going to make the workers a lot easier to get rid of," ASU NSW Secretary Sally McManus told AAP.