Has Grosvenor public commitment to converting Labour Hire Contract Mine Workers to Anglo full timers been just a successful PR exercise?
There was an article on the Mackay Mercury site yesterday about contract workers who have been working for many years at Grosvenor, and in particular before the explosion on May 6th 2020.
The article details about how after all the PR worded assurances about how Anglo was going to change its ways of employment and particularly at Grosvenor were just that.
PUBLIC RELATIONS
It is now just over 3 years since the methane explosion that critically burnt 5 miners, and so the time limit for possible legal action against Anglo Management has expired.
So it is not a surprise, if Anglo has made the decision to be comfortable and public about what it has actually done, not what it implied it would.
No doubt labour hire workers who have been employed by at Grosvenor since 2016 and have still been willing to work at Grosvenor since 2020 have been bypassed for new labour hire who have been at Grosvenor for 3 months .
It is too late for any contract workers to be brave enough to now come forward with further information about what was going on at Grosvenor in the lead up to the explosion in 2020.
Even if they did come forward now, Anglo would just say it is sour grapes for missing out on the full time job.
The latest actions of Anglo is just a continuation of the actions as depicted by Professor Quinlan in his analysis “Ten Pathways to Death and Disaster. Learning from Fatal Incidents in Mines and Other High Hazard Workplaces”
You would have thought Quinlan was sitting and listening in various offices of the parties before, during and after the Inquiry, its Report and the cone of secrecy ever since.
In the section on Internal government processes, interest groups and the corrosion of reform he states
However, such wide-ranging and thorough inquiries are by no means typical. In his study of the North Sea oil industry Mathiessen (1980, 1981, 1985 cited in Johnstone, 2006) developed the concept of pulverisation to explain how interest groups sought to disembody events from their context and thereby exculpate criminal behaviour. Elements of pulverisation include the following.
First, splintering the event into a series of details which then become the focus of the inquiry, like the technical specifications of particular equipment or a source of ignition.
Second, blame-shifting, most typically allegations of sabotage or worker fault.
Third, promoting the organisation as a good corporate citizen, including reference to its prior good safety record and community support activities.
Fourth, individualising the event by presenting it as special and atypical.
Fifth, isolating the event from both the past and future by downplaying past events or patterns of behaviour, reshaping the past OHS record or locating the event as confined to an outmoded past.
Sixth and finally, anthropomorphising the defendant by conflating the human characteristics of managers with the organisation or attributing human characteristics to the organisation; for example, through its community service activities.
The involvement of high-priced legal counsel in inquiries has also been criticised as helping to promote these strategies or others (see Kininmonth, 2010). Evidence of these strategies being employed will seldom be explicit in the final report of an inquiry but is more likely to be apparent in media reports and transcripts of inquiry hearings
Anglo has obviously decided that the urgent need to be seen as a good corporate citizens and really changing its spots about directly employing Production and Engineering Workers no longer applies.
After all what penalty has anyone from Senior Management and especially the upper decision makers?
NONE.
No they can never ever be.
Grosvenor mine workers angry over alleged job pledge backflip
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/mackay/grosvenor-mine-workers-angry-over-alleged-job-pledge-backflip/news-story/1952fb5b29257f373f2a374c88b53e8f
A group of Moranbah mine contractors are frustrated and angry after mining giant Anglo allegedly backflipped on promised permanent jobs that would have come with a significant wage increase.
One Key labour hire workers at Moranbah’s Grosvenor mine say they have been left in limbo over their job security.
“It’s beyond frustrating,” one of the workers, who asked to remain anonymous, said.
Letters calling for expressions of interest were sent out to “suitably qualified Grosvenor One Key” contractors to apply for permanent positions as part of the “Grosvenor Workforce Transition”.
Phase one, which occurred over the past two to three months, had involved contractor underground workers being moved to permanent positions under the latest Anglo Grosvenor Enterprise Agreement 2022.
The worker said they were told they had to apply for the roles and it was understood the process was just a formality.
“We were basically told that the shirts were ours,” he said, adding not only did the move come with job security but also a significant pay raise.
Interview dates were set, but a day or two before a number of the One Key workers were due to sit down the interviews were cancelled and they were told they would not be offered permanent jobs under the new EA.
The worker said crews were told they were staying as contractors with One Key and there may be a different arrangement in 12 to 18 months.
“We were told in good faith and given the word and told all the way up to interviews… and then it was pulled from under us,” the worker said.
“It’s our time now – we’ve hung in there, this is our time.”
In 2022 Anglo announced it had created 270 permanent jobs over two mines, with 200 earmarked for Grosvenor’s underground workers across the longwall, maintenance, outbye, development and supervisory teams.
