As Australia’s biggest supplier of the vital ingredient for making steel – coking coal, BHP Billiton’s Mutsubishi Alliance is in trouble. Today 3,500 workers at six mines across Queensland’s Bowen Basin are on strike.
The company says the union demands will effect their competitiveness and the union says their union rights were stripped away under Work Choices and they want them back. Those rights include having union employees in safety roles, rather than managers, and 14 other outstanding issues, including housing and equal pay for employees and contractors.
Negotiations with the company have been going on for 15 months and the union says it’s time to take action. There are three unions involved and it’s the biggest industrial action since the Howard government came to power and changed workplace rules.
BHP-Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance released a statement saying it reserves the right to manage its business in a safe and commercially successful way and wants to return to the negotiating table. And the company has given the workers an option that only the very brave would dare to take up - employees who wish to continue working will be welcome to do so.
A cynic might say that surely this can’t be happening under a Labor government who introduced the Fair Work Act, but it just reinforces the gulf that has, and always will exist between management and worker.
No comments:
Post a Comment