Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I want to draw the Senate's attention to the plight of workers at the Goonyella Riverside Mine near Moranbah, in Central Queensland. Recently, BHP distributed a memo to workers at the mine about Christmas Day and Boxing Day. The memo reads: 'We are again considering operating Goonyella mine over Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2020. Shortly you will have the opportunity to express interest in working over the period. The company does not require any employees to work over Christmas Day and Boxing Day. We respect that for some employees these days are important for them to not be at work due to family, religious or other personal circumstances.' It goes on to explain how people can apply for the privilege of working on Christmas Day.

It also contains a footnote: 'The rates for working on Christmas Day and Boxing Day do not apply to Operations Services employees and contractors. Operations Services employees should seek advice from their leaders on contractor rates as set by the contracting companies.' The thing is that Operations Services employees are BHP employees—at least, that is what BHP tells us in its marketing videos on YouTube and its sponsored ads on Twitter. But the reality is that these workers who work for OS will have to work on Christmas Day because it's in their agreement. They don't get to choose to work on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and if they work on Christmas Day and Boxing Day they will not get paid additional rates. It is curious why you would get to a situation where you have two tiers of workers working at the same mine site doing the same job but getting paid different pay on Christmas Day, of all days, and not being able to choose to spend that day with their families if they wish to. It takes me back to when these OS agreements were organised by BHP as a way of getting around the enterprise agreements that existed on mine sites in Central Queensland.

Workers and unions have raised concerns about these agreements since they were made. I came across these agreements in 2008. I was working at the AMWU, and I remember picking up the phone and on the other end was Chris Harper—the AMWU coal shop steward in the area. He said to me these words: 'You know, this doesn't look right. It just doesn't look right.' And you know what? It didn't. When you have a look at these agreements, they don't include the acronym BHP and they don't clearly say that these people will work for BHP. But that's how OS got started.

BHP registered two companies in 2018, and between them they employed about 80 people. They put agreements to these employees without engaging unions or having employee representatives present. These agreements would apply to anyone working at the company's mine sites, no matter which site they worked at, yet BHP only took these agreements to a certain amount of employees working in Western Australia. The maintenance agreement that I'm referring to was signed off by nine employees in Western Australia, and now it applies to thousands of workers in Central Queensland working at sites all over Central Queensland where there are already enterprise agreements in place.

The agreements are currently being appealed, and one of the tests that are being looked at is the better off overall test. That's a legal question. But these agreements just don't pass the pub test either—or the moral test, or the fairness test. Ultimately, what they mean is that you have workers on site doing the same job and wearing the same uniform but getting different rates of pay. On this side of the chamber we have always firmly believed that if you do the same job you should get the same pay. It is simple. It is the case of OS employees, when they are wearing exactly the same shirt with the same logo on it.

We know that, whenever it comes to standing up for workers' rights in these mines, the Liberal-Nationals go missing. They have done it time and time again, and they are not standing up on this occasion to put a stop to these agreements. They're trying to make sure that workers have to work on Christmas Day without pay. (Time expired)

Senate adjourned at 19 : 55