Mineworkers at five of Glencore's open-cut mines in Australia's Hunter Valley coal region are planning to go on strike for four days from 6 am Sydney time Sunday in an escalation of an industrial dispute, a senior union official said Friday.
The 96 hours of planned industrial action at the five mines -- Bulga, Glendell, Liddell, Mangoola and Ravensworth plus the Liddell and Ravensworth coal processing plants -- is the longest strike to date in the dispute that began in early June.
"Work stoppages have continued till now on a rolling basis and at different levels at the mine sites," said Peter Jordan, president of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union's northern district in New South Wales.
Workers at Glencore's Bulga underground mine are set to join in the industrial action next week, when they go on strike for four days from Tuesday, Jordan said.
Bulga underground mine has a fully unionized workforce of 89 permanent employees and around 70 out of 75 voted for strike action of up to 49 hours at a time, according to a notice Monday from the Australian Fair Work Commission, a government employment relations agency.
Jordan said his union was open to talks with Glencore to resolve the dispute, but talks for two mines were interrupted when the miner insisted that workers vote on its proposed agreements, which they rejected.
"We have resumed negotiations this week at Glendell mine after they were effectively put on hold for two weeks. Mangoola has yet to resume negotiations," he said.
Jordan said the company was not addressing the workers' concerns, including security of employment for permanent workers, "excessive" use of contract workers, and redundancy terms for retrenched workers.
STRIKE IMPACT
Jordan said he was sure the industrial action, now in its third month, was having an impact on coal production at Glencore's Hunter Valley export coal mines.
"A train from Mangoola mine was only one-third full as they did not have enough coal in stock to fill it," he said.
"The company's drill and blast operations are being delayed at its mines, and sooner or later there will be a backlog of overburden [to move] before they are able to continue to dig for coal," he stated.
He added that other Hunter Valley miners had received approaches from Glencore to buy coal for its customers.
Another Glencore mine, Ulan, in New South Wales has also been affected by industrial action including a recent 18-hour work stoppage, and workers notified the company of their intention to go on strike for four days.
LOCK-OUT
Glencore confirmed Friday that it had again locked out 185 workers engaged in industrial action at its Oaky North underground mine for coking coal in Queensland.
Around 43,000 man hours of strike action has been logged for Oaky North mine since early May.
"Glencore has locked mineworkers out of Oaky North for eight days for the third week," Jordan said.
If Glencore locked out workers from its Hunter Valley mines, the union would have to consider some form of tit-for-tat industrial action.
The union is holding a mass meeting Tuesday for its 1,400 members involved in the Glencore dispute at which the union's next steps will be discussed, Jordan said.
"The CFMEU is happy to engage in any negotiations to get the dispute resolved and Glencore mineworkers back to work," he added.
Glencore was contacted for comment and to explain its position it referred Platts to a speech made by its head of global coal assets, Peter Freyberg to an Australian-British Chamber of Commerce gathering on August 2.
Freyberg said that the company wanted to achieve modern, flexible and streamlined employment agreements for its workforce, and he stated that the CFMEU appeared to be running a national campaign against the company with its industrial action.
"We will continue to run our operations in a safe manner during the industrial action to continue to deliver coal to our customers," he said.
The company's five open-cut Hunter Valley mines together produce around 31 million mt/year of thermal and coking coal, and Ulan underground mine produces about 3 million mt/year.
