Fletch is 51, and a fitter by trade. He’s been employed at the Carlton United Breweries plant in Melbourne’s Abbotsford for 34 years – since he was 17. When I met him last Tuesday, it was in the street outside the brewery; here, amid the puddles of a rainy Melbourne winter, Fletch is one of a group of tradies camped out in a canvas army tent, maintaining a “community protest” next to the shut gates of the CUB compound.

There are no trees in this industrial laneway and with the sky overcast it’s as grey as it is miserable – but Fletch and his colleagues are maintaining their uncomfortable vigil. Two weeks ago, he and more than 50 other fitters and electricians from CUB were summoned to a meeting at a hotel and told that their jobs had been re-contracted to another service subcontractor.

Management explained they could reapply, but one look at the new contracts was eye-opening. It wasn’t just that their existing conditions had been stripped, or that the new contracts contained nightmarish clauses – including one in which management could oblige them into medical or psychiatric treatments, at their own expense – they were also being told they could come back to work at jobs they’d been doing for years if they accepted pay cuts of up to 65%. They said no. Now, they’re here.

This is Fletch. Before casting a vote, I’d recommend strongly you consider his sign. Photograph: Van Badham/The Guardian

The level of petty vindictiveness that infests industrial relations law in this country is manifest in what’s happening at Abbotsford. Injunctions prevent the protesting workers calling their action a “picket”, and they’re certainly not allowed to call the people that CUB is bringing into the compound in buses with blacked-out windows “scabs”. There’s even an injunction insisting they can’t use a megaphone outside the facility.

But the injunction can’t apply to everyone, and allies of the workers have parked a truck laden with megaphones outside the gates. Every 15 minutes, a guy called Steve bellows into the sound system: “Shame ... Shame ... Shame...!” towards the factory at a volume you can feel through your feet. Every hour, he plays the soundtrack of Charlie Chaplin’s famous speech in defence of equality from The Great Dictator. Chaplin’s inspirational tone is encouraging among the gloom, because otherwise the scene on the street outside CUB is akin to a newsreel from Thatcher-era Britain with only the addition of some mobile phones.

Also in the protest tent is Harry, who’s 20 and only halfway through a fitting apprenticeship that he doesn’t know how he will complete if he can’t get back to work soon. Tom, Huey and Vaughan are aged between 23-50, with 21 years at the factory between them. There’s another guy I don’t get to talk to, because he’s on the phone to his partner – their kid’s had an accident and been taken to hospital. You can see in the stiffness of his movements and hear in snatches of his voice the enhanced edge of frustration his own situation brings to dealing with the crisis at home.

Labour economist John Spoehr from the University of Adelaide says a third of manufacturing workers who lose their lobs in similar circumstances become long-term unemployed. There have been enough retrenchments around Australia in recent years for everyone to be worried for their economic future. When the job you’ve had for 34 years is re-offered to you with a 65% pay cut, it’s hard to believe there will be better jobs going elsewhere.

There aren’t. I’ve written earlier about the downturn in Australian manufacturing – a phenomenon occurring on these shores not for reasons of technological change, or of international uncompetitiveness, but for dovetailing causes of inactive government policy and corporate greed.

CUB brew the Carlton beers, Pure Blonde, VB and the Bulmer’s ciders – these are not products vulnerable to competition from downloads or an app, and CUB yet dominates the Australian beer market, owning five of the 10 biggest brands and, with VB, Australia’s single most popular. CUB’s international owner, the London-based SABMiller, is hardly facing tough times, either. It’s maintaining US$22bn a year in revenue as it prepares to sell itself to another beer giant, Anheuser-Busch InBev, in a deal worth US$104bn. It’s certainly not burdened with a heavy tax bill: last year, SABMiller miraculously generated zero taxable income in Australia, despite recording A$2bn in total earnings. That’s a lot of money not to pay tax on.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union is one of those fighting for the workers at Abbotsford; the national president of the AMWU, Andrew Dettmer, finds SABMiller’s actions “despicable”, and points to the global context of a growing problem. Says Dettmer:

At time when the IMF, the OECD and the rest of the architecture of trickle down economics are saying workers need a pay rise, and more money from income needs to circulate in economies to maintain growth, companies like SABMiller think it’s not their responsibility, and they’re going to reduce workers’ pay regardless.

SABMiller insist that its action in Abbotsford is technically legal because it has no direct contractual relationship with the maintenance crews laid off – it’s been with one subcontractor, and it is merely passing a contract to another who will simply assert the workers’ pay and conditions at its own discretion.

The argument the workers’ unions are making is that what’s taking place is a “transmission of business” manoeuvre, a corporate sleight-of-hand where a workforce is passed from one company to another to force new conditions on employees – like cutting their pay, or stripping their conditions – to improve the overall corporate master’s bottom line.

With the media stunts, grip-and-grins, policy blurts and corflute art of an election going on, it may be opportunistic timing for SABMiller to do this to a local workforce, but it would be a mistake for Australian voters to allow themselves to be distracted from its meaning. Weakening “transmission of business” protections has long been a habit of Liberal industrial relations policy, and as Malcolm Turnbull and Michaelia Cash travel the country flattering company owners as they spruik a “new economy” and their infamously unexplained “plan” for “jobs and growth”, one has to wonder if the kind of carefree cruelty dished out to workers at CUB is what they mean by an “agile” and “flexible” economy. Only last week, Griffin coal mine employees walked off the job when confronted with a 43% pay cut.

I took photos of Fletch and the others camped outside at CUB standing with a sign they’d made, reading “Are You Next?”. Before casting a vote, I’d recommend strongly people consider that thought.