Union Halts Industrial Action to Talk in NZ’s Coal Fields, But EPMU Miners Walk Out on Contractor

A caustic strike by 800 miners of state-owned Solid Energy and its contractors was suspended by the union last week as “good faith” leading into government-mediated talks. The miners are represented by New Zealand ICEM affiliate Engineering, Paper, and Manufacturing Union (EPMU).

But 200 miners took further strike action early on 13 July, just days after industrial actions were halted. Only this occurred not at Solid but at HWE Mining, an Australia contractor working Solid Energy’s Rotowaro mine near Huntley. The miners’ issue there is over pay. HWE Mining has recently been bought by Leighton Contractors in Australia, and it also is a major contractor to the big mining houses.

 
EPMU’s HWE unit struck the Rotowaro mine for 20 hours on 29 June. Other rolling stoppages in this three-week-old dispute have happened at the Terrace Mine, the Stockton mine near Ngakawa, as well as at other Solid facilities.

At the underground Spring Creek mine near Greymouth on 2 July, Australian workers doing development work at the site, refused to cross picket lines of EPMU members, thus ratcheting up pressure on the mining bosses.

The industrial actions, which begun 26 June, are over a break-down in June of talks on renewal of the Mining Industry Multi-Employer Collective Agreement. The employer table consists of Solid Energy and some eight of its major contractors.

EPMU Organising Director Ged O’Connell said last week ago that miners would suspend their nationwide overtime ban and campaign of spontaneous rolling stoppages “as a show of good faith, and miners at the Spring Creek and Terrace Mines agreed to suspend their eleven day strike” in order for meaningful mediation to occur.

The dispute became pitched in late June when management at the Spring Creek mine and the Terrace mine near Reefton refused to provide the customary transportation within the jobsites. The curtailment was retaliatory, since it was taken immediately after miners took their initial industrial actions. It also angered miners, due mainly to the fact that it stranded 42 workers in an unsafe environment.

O’Connell called it “immature behaviour” by Solid. A report quoted him as saying, “Responsible employers do not put their workers’ safety at risk just so they can prove a point, whatever the circumstances might be.”

The 800 miners of Solid Coal and its contractors were also involved in a three-month standoff in 2005 with the employers. That ended with 5% pay raises won.