Two months ago, Hua cut her finger to the bone when she was boning a chicken at work. Her friend Dao watched in horror as Hua tried to mask her pain and bandage the finger to keep it hidden, knowing the injury could deem her useless to her employer and get her sacked.

Hua is one of the workers at the Baiada chicken factory in Laverton North where, against the odds, striking workers won their campaign this week. On a number of visits to the picket line, I listened to numerous horror stories of workers who worked in brutal conditions and risked their lives for as little as $8 an hour.

The lack of dignity in the factory is no better illustrated than in the events of August last year and the workplace death of Baiada worker Sarel Singh.

Workers said when their colleague was killed in the chicken packing machine, they had to remove his remains from the machine, hose it down and start up production again within two hours.

For those workers, their humanity had been stripped of all recognition beyond their status as workers. And in this precarious existence, one thing counts above everything: dignity.

Before last week's dispute started, workers reported that cleaning work was still being ordered when machines were not closed off and isolated. Mai told me how on a daily basis she was required to shift boxes of chickens that weighed almost as much as she did. Another worker recalled how his manager refused to call an ambulance to take him to hospital when he had fractured his foot.

Those on the picket line spoke of constant bullying, assaults and sexual harassment by immediate superiors in the plant.

These are precisely the type of conditions that are creating a new class of worker that commentators are increasingly referring to as the ''precariat'' - people whose lives are precarious because they have little or no job security and few employment rights.

Members of the precariat are stripped of their ability to be human, so that only their economic value as workers counts. To speak out or act against even the most aggressive and violent conditions is not possible for the vulnerable worker. The lives of such workers lack predictability and security.

Victoria's Agriculture Minister, Peter Walsh, condemned the strike, saying the picketers were ''putting animal welfare at risk'' and ''causing hip pocket pain for growers''.

This twisted neo-liberal logic, in which animal welfare and the economic interests of farmers are more important than the lives of people, such as Sarel Singh and his workmates, is difficult to comprehend.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/rare-victory-for-workers-whose-dignity-was-cut-to-the-bone-20111124-1nwwj.html