Duncan Meerding, Hobart
A May 11 meeting of workers employed at the Beaconsfield goldmine in northern Tasmania called for an independent judicial inquiry into the rock fall in the mine on April 25 that resulted in the death of miner Larry Knight, 45, and the trapping of two other mineworkers - Todd Russell, 35, and Brant Webb, 37 - 925 metres underground.
Russel and Webb walked out of the mine on May 9, after a long tunnelling effort by rescue workers.
A similar rock fall occurred last October, due to seismic activity measuring 2.1 on the Richter scale. Production at the mine was not stopped after this earlier rock fall.
The May 19 Hobart Mercury reported that Beaconsfield mine manager Matthew Gill told the coronial inquest into Knight's death, which opened on May 17, that no miners had reported concerns about safety at the mine. Gill must have missed the May 1 ABC Radio National AM program in which Don Schofield, chief inspector of Industry Workplace Standards Tasmania, revealed that two workers from the mine had lodged complaints within the last 12 months about safety at the mine.
The mine's management have not guaranteed pay to the Beaconsfield miners past June 9, and have admitted that it will take a minimum of two months before the workers will be able to return to work.
Paul Howes, Australian Workers Union (AWU) national vice-president, told Green Left Weekly: "Workplace accidents don't just happen - employers let them happen. In the resources industry, in the last nine years we have had 144 fatalities across the country at the same time as the resources companies - the big players like Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton - have been making record profits.
"The reality is the industry isn't interested in providing safe workplaces. All they are interested in is making as much money as they can as quickly as they can from the stuff in the ground.
"Since we moved to self-regulation in the safety system in 1998, things have gone backwards in terms of safety standards in the industry.
"You have a lot of hot-shot operators out there that are just interested in pulling out as much money as they can out of the resources industry, as quickly as possible and not really looking at the human cost of it. Frankly, from the union's point of view, we're sick to death of it and we're not going to allow our members to risk any more for a few ounces of gold."
Howes explained that under the Work Choices legislation the current AWU bans on workers entering the Beaconsfield mine are illegal.
"Workers are unable to effectively take any industrial action where they see a risk to peoples health and safety", he said. "The Work Choices legislation states that you can only take industrial action or stop work where work is posing an immediate threat to a workers health and safety. The burden of proof falls on the workers. In a case like Beaconsfield, it would be impossible for us to do that, because we do not have access to the type of information that the company does."
From Green Left Weekly, May 24, 2006.
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