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22 February, 2010
The pitched battle in Australia’s coal fields between Xstrata and the Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union (CFMEU) continues as miners at Tahmoor in New South Wales overwhelmingly voted down a contract offer today. Xstrata has been aggressively attacking workplace conditions and union rights at several coal mines in Australia, but the Tahmoor mine dispute has become prominent due to the length of the conflict and the intensity of it.
Some 300 miners there faced off against an Xstrata lockout from 8-15 February and then following that lockout, they imposed another three days of industrial actions. CFMEU members are frustrated because they’ve been without a credible enterprise labour agreement now for nearly 11 months, but they’re even more frustrated that Xstrata is trying to set the clock back to John Howard and his WorkChoices regime.
The balloting at Tahmoor that started last week was ordered by a government Fair Work tribunal, after the government ruled against CFMEU allegations that Xstrata had engaged in bad-faith bargaining in bypassing the union and going directly to workers on bargaining matters.
Swiss-based Xstrata seeks an enterprise agreement that gives it broad flexibility on writing and re-writing workplace polices and procedures; one that is void of any independent arbitration mechanism; and one in which the union, or any common disputes procedure, is absent from health and safety issues.
Locked out Xstrata workers at Tahmoor
Although pay is not forefront to this dispute, the fact that Xstrata wants all future bonus schemes to not be a subject for bargaining is another and unpopular proposal. Even though Xstrata is utilizing its lockout right contained in the disputes process of the labour government’s Fair Work statutes, its crass attitude toward terms and conditions of work represents a lingering culture of Howard’s one-sided labour laws of the recent past.
CFMEU miners at Xstrata’s Bulga mine in New South Wales faced a 24-hour lockout by the company on 19 January after engaging in lawful industrial actions the previous two days. Some 250 miners at Bulga had a collective agreement expire in December 2009 and face many of the same company-positioned proposals that miners at Tahmoor have now rejected. Bargaining with the company also is about to commence at two other CFMEU-represented mines, Liddell and Glendell, both in Queensland, where 450 miners are now braced to resist Xstrata’s draconian terms.
Visit the CFMEU’s Xstrata Facts website here.