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12 January, 2009
Australia’s Construction, Forestry, Mining, and Energy Union’s (CFMEU) fight to preserve mining jobs against a MNC’s callousness, making workers the victims of an economic downturn, got a ruling in the Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) last week. That ruling, delivered on 8 January, calls for a one-week consultation period – beginning today – in which Xstrata must justify its ill-taken decision to sack 230 coal miners at Oaky Creek No. 1 Mine in Queensland.
The case stands as a key test in Australia regarding a company shifting the burden of the recent economic collapse onto workers. CFMEU is not alone at present in fiercely resisting job cuts because of a failed neo-liberal economic agenda. From Russia to Chile, at Europe’s largest zinc deposits in Ireland’s County Meath, where 670 were retrenched by Tara Mines, to the hundreds of thousands of migrant miners across the world who are out of work with no place to go, it is workers who are paying the unjust price of capital’s failure.
The CFMEU fightback is just one example of the necessary, the pivotally necessary response that is needed to re-shape a social agenda.
In Bolivia, the FSTMB mine union federation staged protests on 9 January calling on the country’s leftist government to allow no layoffs. That came just after Xstrata’s holding partner – Swiss-based Glencore International – announced job cuts of 700 zinc and lead mines, and at the Sinchi Wayra smelting plant. Workers threatened to take over the operations if the sackings came.
In Brazil, iron ore miners of Vale stopped work last Thursday, 8 January, at a mine in Itabira over the mining company’s decision to retrench 1,300 jobs. Itabira, in Minas Gerais state, is where Vale was founded. Mining union Metabase says that as many as 10,000 miners could lose their jobs in Brazil because of economic cuts.
In South Africa, estimates say that 40,000 miners could be out work through 2009 because of the economic meltdown. Many will be migrant workers. ICEM and National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) President Senzeni Zokwana predicted the social impact of such sudden and unprecedented joblessness will be far-reaching and disturbing.
ICEM President Senzeni Sokwana
In Australia on 16 December, Anglo-Swiss Xstrata levelled a surprise on the 1,800-person town of Tieri, central Queensland, by announcing that the jobs of miners at one part of Oaky Creek’s rich coal seams would be indefinitely suspended.
ICEM-affiliated CFMEU took the matter to the AIRC to prevent the sackings. In arbitration hearings on 22 December, and again from 6-7 January in Brisbane, CFMEU argued that Xstrata’s price drops are a speck in comparison with its recent coal pricing history has reverted only to early 2008 thermal coal prices to meet slowing demand from the steel industry. Xstrata has an industry-wide reputation, especially over Oaky Creek’s high-quality coking coal, of driving prices upward in tight markets, thus making it the industry’s price-setter during boom times.
The CFMEU sought a four-week period for the consultative process. The AIRC gave the process a week to work. The CFMEU seeks to get Xstrata to place retrenched workers in its other Queensland operations, specifically Oaky Creek North, a separate longwall operation. The company resists. The union has charged Xstrata with stonewalling the AIRC process, relying on former Howard government work laws to justify its privilege to inflict social degradation on workers.
“Xstrata has chosen to take advantage of John Howard’s WorkChoices laws and argues heartlessly that they are not required to afford workers natural justice in the redundancy process,” said CFMEU Mining and Energy Vice President Stuart Vaccaneo. “This really is corporate cowboy stuff.”
For the company’s part, in December, a spokesman called CFMEU guilty of political posturing by wasting the AIRC’s time in bringing the legal case. Vaccaneo called that the “height of arrogance,” given what 230 Queensland families face. “It’s not about politics—it’s about the future of (these) workers and their families.”
Following the 8 January AIRC ruling mandating this week as the week for labour-management consultation, a company spokesman said Xstrata will talk to the union, but “we have appropriately managed those people” affected.
Some 450 job cuts were announced in December in Queensland. Although the Xstrata Oaky Creek case is the most high profile one, other mining enterprises in the region like Macarthur Coal Ltd. and Oz Minerals, a zinc producer, have also fired miners.
Oaky Creek, first starting production in 1983, was bought by Xstrata when it took over MIM Holdings in 2003. Xstrata owns 55% of Oaky Creek, while Japanese companies Sumisho Coal, Itocho Coal, and ICRA OC Ltd. hold remaining ownership. Oaky Creek exports 11 million metric tonnes annually to steel mills in Europe, Japan, and North and South America.