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McCain Foods South Canterbury workers who have travelled to Australia to fill in for striking workers from the company's Ballarat factory have been condemned by the E tū union.

E tu national industry strategy director Neville Donaldson, whose role focuses on the food industry, has confirmed three workers from South Canterbury travelled to Ballarat last week and a further seven are expected to go this week.

It is believed they were shuffled through the Ballarat factory's back doors to avoid picketing staff.

One of the workers, a Timaru man, was a union member who resigned his membership as soon as the union expressed concerns to him about his decision to travel to Australia.

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"We are both horrified and disgusted in the action of those workers to travel that distance to be there and undermine the rights and terms and conditions of other workers," Donaldson said.

"It is about as low as you can go."

The workers were described as "shop floor operators", holding positions titled process operator and leading hand.

Donaldson received a report late last week about the workers' intentions.

"We have notified our colleagues in Australia that these workers are coming and apologised profusely that New Zealanders would do such a thing. We are communicating and working with them to do what we can to help resolve their dispute," Donaldson said.

McCain New Zealand plant manager Gordon Gillies was contacted but referred inquiries to the company's PR manager, Rhys Ryan of Porter Novelli, who emailed a statement from a company spokesperson.

"McCain has been conducting good faith bargaining negotiations with the union here in Ballarat for six months, however, the union has now instigated protected action, which limits our ability to meet our customers' needs," the statement said.

"We're disappointed it's come to this, but we believe it is important we give all our employees the right to vote on our offer to them, because it is our employees and their families who are losing money while this action continues.

"We're confident our employees will vote for our offer, which includes a significant wage increase that is above the rate of inflation.

"The voting process will take around two weeks, so we're bringing in expertise from our teams in Hastings and Timaru to assist us in running the plants while the process takes place. This is also an opportunity for our managers and supervisors to share expertise and knowledge which will hopefully improve the operations of all our plants in the Australia/New Zealand region," the statement said.

Donaldson said there was "no way in hell" the workers would have been forced or pressured into going to Ballarat.

"It might be that they have never been out of New Zealand and found it exciting to travel at the company's expense. Regardless of their reasons for making this decision, it was a bad one and they will regret it."

"It is not the first time somebody has scabbed and it won't be the last time. They have to live with the stigma attached to it," he said.

"They are all members of the community. These people will come back and will quickly understand the community will not accept [their actions] as fair or reasonable and neither should they," he said.

Donaldson was not aware staff from Hastings were also going to Ballarat.

"It's nothing to be proud of," he said.