Josephine Hodgson had waited 11 years for her chance to speak about how she lost her job as a mushroom picker to be replaced by workers from a labour hire company.
"The union sold us out," the 67-year-old said outside the trade union royal commission in Sydney.
"We knew that. We've always known that but we didn't think there was anything we could do about it."
Ms Hodgson and three former workmates testified at the commission on Wednesday about their experience working for one of the country's biggest mushroom producers, Chiquita Mushrooms, and being represented by the Australian Workers' Union.
The commission has heard previously that the AWU received payments of $4000 a month from Chiquita for six months, at the same time as negotiations over a new enterprise bargaining agreement.
Barristers for the commission concluded that the AWU provided no services for the payments.
The four women who testified on Wednesday had worked at Chiquita for up to 16 years before facing redundancy in 2004.
Injuries to necks, shoulders, wrists and hands were common in the physically demanding job and Chiquita was faced with a huge insurance premium for its workers' compensation premium.
The commission has heard that one feature of Chiquita's talks on a new EBA was increasing use of labour hire workers to reduce its compensation premiums.
Workers at the mushroom farms did not know Chiquita had begun making the payments of $4,000 a month to the AWU, labelled "paid education leave", the court has heard.
In 2004, workers at the mushroom farm were shown a new EBA that made substantial changes - increasing the use of labour hire positions and shifting their pay to an hourly rate that would leave them earning less than the pay-by-weight scheme used previously.
The court also heard the company wanted to make staff redundant and the AWU organiser for Chiquita, Frank Leo, was supportive of the company's position.
Sharon Dellevergini, now 52, worked for 13 years at Chiquita.
She told the commission on Wednesday that at one meeting at the farm, Mr Leo told her that "this is what the company needed to do".
"I thought it was quite illegal to make us redundant when they were just going to put someone in that position but he seemed to think that this is what they had to do," Ms Dellevergini said.
In a written statement to the commission, Ms Dellevergini said she had not heard of the $4000 monthly payments to the AWU until she read about them in a newspaper this year.
"I was dumbfounded but it made sense to me considering the lack of support we received from the AWU during the redundancy process," she said.
Ms Hodgson, Ms Dellevergini and their former workmates Marjorie Hodgson and Marion Rogers all joined the AWU when they started work at Chiquita.
Josephine Hodgson testified that when she was made redundant in 2004, she phoned Mr Leo telling him she did not want to be put off and he told her there was nothing he could do.
On Wednesday, Ms Hodgson said she felt disappointed.
"You pay your money and you get cheated," she said.
Federal opposition leader Bill Shorten was Victorian and national head of the AWU in 2004.
Mr Shorten was asked, when he appeared before the commission in July, whether he told workers about the $4,000 paid education leave payments.
He replied: "I'm sure Frank would have done that."
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