A full bench hearing of the Fair Work Commission (FWC) has rejected the Transport Workers Union (TWU) appeal in a pay-rates dispute with Linfox Australia.

The union was appealing a decision passed by the FWC Commissioner on January 21, but all six of its appeals have now been rejected.

The TWU argued Linfox should pay rates outlines in the 2013 Alternative Payment Method (APM) agreements to its employees, specifically those delivering kegs and packaged products for Carlton United Breweries (CUB) at a site in Rosehill, Victoria.

But the company said that the APM agreements had expired in 2013, and so it would remunerate its Rosehill site employees according to the terms agreed to in the 2014 agreement.

Linfox argued that it could lose its CUB contract if it continued to pay them on the rates prescribed in the expired agreements.

Initially, the FWC commissioner had stated that since neither side moved to incorporate the terms of the 2013 APM agreements into the 2014 agreement, Linfox was “entitled to apply the totality of the 2014 agreement”.

The full bench has now concluded that the commissioner’s decision was valid, and so Linfox is under no obligation to return to the terms of the expired APM.

The commission also rejected the union’s claim that clauses in the AMP agreements were a “custom and practice”, finding that they did not form part of the 2014 agreement.