JEFFREY Creak has been on strike for 11 days and will not make his mortgage payment this week.

The 28-year-old is not looking forward to the phone call he will make to his bank today.

Mr Creak has worked at car component manufacturer Tristar since he left school 11 years ago.

“It’s hard,” he said yesterday. “I am going to have to ring up and say I can’t pay the house this week.”

Married and with a one-year-old son who has had several operations on his club feet and requires continuing physiotherapy, he says: “My wife is freaking out. But she agrees with what I am doing.

“It is pretty sad, but you have to stick up for what you believe in. It is all right for these rich people who get paid thousands and thousands a week, but we don’t. We have to keep what we got, our entitlements, not give them away.”

Mr Creak said the strongest feeling among the close-knit community of Tristar workers was anger.

“The ones with more than one child who haven’t got any advance payments on their home loans are feeling it. They are upset and angry,” he said.

“The company is taking what we have already and giving us less. It is not on.”

Of the two-day hearing before commissioner Robert Redmond at the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in Sydney, Mr Creak said: “I can’t believe one man, the commissioner, holds my future in his hands, in the balance, and I don’t even know him.”

Mr Creak’s wife Katrina said: “It is a big worry financially, raising a baby and paying the house off. Now I’m looking for work to try and get some income, but that’s pretty difficult with a one- year-old. My family has been providing us with food.”

Many other workers were equally impassioned.

“Who guarantees John Howard’s entitlements?” one asked. “At least we make something.”

Carlos Jaramillo, 53, who has worked at Tristar for five years, said many of the workers were affected badly. “We have mortgages, we have children; we can’t afford it but we have to fight for what we believe.

“Companies are closing all over Australia and leaving people without their entitlements. No one is protecting us. The laws are against the worker. Everybody believes passionately in this, they don’t want to give up until they know their entitlements are protected.”

Tony Pupalevski, 33, who has worked at Tristar for 12 years and gave evidence at yesterday’s hearing, said: “We are always prepared to fight to negotiate, but we are fighting for our entitlements.”