A Western Australian mining community have protested in Perth outside the Fair Work Commission last week over wage cuts of 43 per cent for maintenance employees.
The Collie community protest marked the start of an AMWU appeal against a Fair Work decision to terminate the existing EBA, which means sudden pay cuts up to $50,000 plus a radically altered mine roster.
The changes were due to take effect from next Monday, but the union won a victory over Griffin Coal when a FWC Full Bench agreed to suspend the decision until they decide on the union’s appeal.
Striking workers from Collie, with their partners and children on school holidays, boarded buses or jumped in their cars in freezing darkness for the three hour drive to Perth for the morning protest rally.
Few had ever protested before, let alone at the FWC in Perth’s city centre, but up to 200 people defended their community from the fallout of the dramatic wage cuts sought by Griffin Coal, owned by India’s Lanco Infratech.
Collie mum Carys Golding, married to an AMWU member, said this was a battle for the survival of small businesses across the entire local region, southwest of Perth.
“Sporting clubs won’t stay in existence because we won’t be able to afford to enrol our children into sport and many fathers won’t be there, they’ll have to work,” she said.
“Businesses won’t last because the money is not there to spend any more, people won’t be able to pay for their homes let alone put food on the table for their children.
“This is not just about a wage cut, it’s about a community which needs to stick together.”
AMWU State Secretary Steve McCartney told local media the decision would significantly affect the mining town’s economy, as well as the lives of the workers and families living there.
“It is not in the public interest to rip away 43 per cent of the income of a significant number of workers and their families in the Collie and local southwest communities,” he said.
“Lanco owned Griffin Coal is one of the worst-run businesses I’ve ever seen, and we refuse to accept that workers and their families should suffer because of this company’s mismanagement.
“Lanco don’t pay their bills, and they’ve been chased by everyone from the Australian Taxation Office, to local earth-moving contractors and the local hardware store, and we won’t accept that somehow our members should pay for that.”
Mr McCartney said if this termination of the award went through, it would have big wage ramifications for mine sites across WA.
Griffin Coal said, in a statement released before the ruling by the full bench, the mine was at risk of closing if it did not reduce wages. The company said they “must bring labour costs back to a sustainable level”.
The company said it had offered to pay 40 per cent above the award rate, which equated a pay cut of around 18 per cent, until a new agreement was reached.
Griffin Coal has also asked employees to work 14 days in every three weeks, up from 10.5 days.
Image: The partner of an AMWU member, Carys Golding, speaks at the rally. AMWU
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