CFMEU Begins Industrial Actions at Xstrata’s Coal Mines in Australia

The campaign for preservation of coal mining jobs at Xstrata operations in New South Wales by the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) in Australia intensified late last week when miners took protected strike action at the Tahmoor mine.

In late July, Swiss and London-based Xstrata said it was cutting 158 of 493 jobs at Tahmoor, a mine producing coking coal, and another 122 jobs – or 20% of the permanent workforce – at its Ulan mine.

Last Friday, CFMEU took strike action at Tahmoor over the job redundancies and demanding that safety standards be upheld. Miners took four-hour work stoppages on 28 and 29 November, and the CFMEU is enforcing overtime bans and not loading coal onto trains. The legal industrial actions began over the weekend of 21-22 November when miners struck for two hours. If management is not willing to negotiate by today, a 24-hour work stoppage will take place this week.

In a statement, CFMEU said, “All we are asking from Xstrata is a deal that protects job security and maintains safety standards at Tahmoor mine. Tahmoor mineworkers work long and hard to deliver Xstrata their healthy profits each year, with the company taking more than A$924 million from its Australian coalmines such as Tahmoor” in 2008.

In early September, 500 residents of the town of Mudgee, New South Wales, marched there in protest to the redundancies at the nearby Ulan mine. CFMEU fears Xstrata’s overall goal is to reduce its permanent workforce and replace it with contractors.

Xstrata bought the Tahmoor mine in 2007 from Centennial Coal, while it acquired majority control of Ulan in 2002 and now has a 90% stake in that mine, with Mitsubishi Development Corp. of Japan holding the remainder 10%.