BY STUART MARTIN
WOLLONGONG — Determined to outsource maintenance work at its Port Kembla steelworks, BHP executives announced on August 7 that 436 jobs in the general and rail maintenance crews are to be axed and the contracts for them handed to Transfield Services and Fluor Goninan.
The company believes the job cuts will save it $150 million over the next 10 years.
BHP has been threatening to outsource maintenance for some time, and succeeded in gaining an Australian Industrial Relations Commission ban on all strike activity over maintenance outsourcing. The unions have countered by gaining an injunction preventing BHP from outsourcing maintenance while negotiations continue.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and Australian Workers Union have vowed to fight the jobs cuts, AWU branch secretary Andy Gillespie threatening "World War Three if they try to enforce this".
So far the unions have refrained from taking any industrial action beyond a stopwork meeting.
BHP once had a large maintenance division, but fabrication and boilermaking have been contracted to an outside firm, ABB, and reportedly 300 workers have taken redundancy packages. First aid and security have also been outsourced, to Serco in April.
In the gas processing byproducts division, meanwhile, there are not enough workers to carry out the work and contractors are already on site. In other divisions too, the workers are overstretched and contractors are increasingly required.
Because of the steel industry agreement, BHP is not able to sack any maintenance workers made "surplus" by outsourcing, but so far has only identified 100 alternative jobs in manufacturing. The others are expected to apply for other positions or take redundancies.
Both the AIRC ban on strikes and the prevention of outsourcing are in effect until August 21, the day after the next commission hearing. It is expected that the AWU and AMWU will call a joint stopwork meeting after the hearing to decide their next steps.
Wayne Phillips, the AMWU's organiser, predicts that if the commission doesn't overturn its decision to prevent BHP from outsourcing, the dispute could continue for the rest of the year.
"Our position is, nothing goes out", he said.
Workers point to the impact of the oursourcing of first aid and security functions as motivation for their stance.
Prior to Serco taking the contract, there were 87 staff employed as ambulance workers and security. After it took over, staffing was reduced to 52, of which only 33 were previously employed by BHP and roughly 10 are management. Shortfalls in security are made up by casuals.
The number of ambulance stations has been reduced from seven to six, and only one is staffed 24 hours a day.
Compounding the problem is the inadequate induction provided by Serco to its new staff members. There have been cases of roving nurses getting lost trying to reach injured workers and one incident when a security guard misdirected an ambulance entering the steelworks.