BY CHRIS SLEE

MELBOURNE — Workers in the power stations and coal mines of the Latrobe Valley have launched a new division of their union, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, which will give them substantially more autonomy and local control.

Fifty people gathered at the union's Morwell office on February 14 to launch the new Victorian Mining and Energy District. Previously, the power workers had been members of the FEDFA division of the CFMEU but are pleased to be transferring to the new division, as their former state secretary John Van Camp has been unsupportive of their campaign for better jobs and conditions.

Workers at Yallourn Energy are trying to negotiate a new enterprise agreement that would protect their conditions and job security, while the company is seeking an arbitrated award that would take away all limits on management prerogative. The dispute led to union bans at Yallourn Energy last year, as well as a four-hour strike of all CFMEU power industry members in the Latrobe Valley in November. Van Camp publicly condemned the strike.

Yallourn Energy has now begun using contract labour at the mine site, in violation of the existing enterprise agreement which requires union approval before contractors are brought in. One hundred workers employed by Roche Thiess Linfox have been brought in to strip overburden.

The Yallourn Energy workers are concerned that this could be the first step in a company plan to sack the entire mine workforce and replace it with a contract workforce under much worse conditions.

The CFMEU will take the issue to the Industrial Relations Commission.

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