1, Pacific Coal, Blair Athol, Errol Hodder, Hail Creek, Tony Maher ">
Rio Tinto workers reinstated after five years
BY ALISON DELLIT
Five years and four days after their unfair dismissal, 16 Queensland miners have finally been granted the right to return to work. The 16, all militants in the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), were sacked on July 21, 1998, from the Blair Athol mine, owned by Rio Tinto subsidiary Pacific Coal.
Rio Tinto is a notorious union basher. It also sacked 108 union activists from its Hunter Valley No. 1 mine in 1998, and the following year another 82 from the nearby Mount Thorley mine. The 190 workers won a record $25 million compensation for unfair dismissal in May last year.
It took three years for the Blair Athol workers' case to be heard by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. In April 2001, AIRC commissioner Errol Hodder ruled that the workers had been unfairly sacked, and should be reinstated. He described the sacking as a "blacklisting" and referred to management's targeting of militants as "blood sport".
Rio Tinto appealed the decision to the full bench of the AIRC. In December, the full bench made the outrageous decision of upholding the ruling that the dismissal was "harsh, unjust and unreasonable", but overturning the workers reinstatement as "not practicable".
Instead, they were offered the maximum compensation allowed under the federal Coalition government's punitive Workplace Relations Act — six months pay each.
To add insult to the injury, Rio Tinto responded by moving in April to evict the 16 workers from their homes, which were rented from the company.
The CFMEU immediately appealed the AIRC decision to the High Court, and also applied for an "exceptional matters order" from the AIRC, asking that the workers be employed at the nearby Hail Creek mine.
On July 25, the AIRC full bench ruled that Rio Tinto must give "preference of employment" to the 16 at the Hail Creek mine.
CFMEU mining division president Tony Maher told Workers Online that the union was "relieved rather than triumphant". "These families deserve the chance to get on with their lives", he said. "They have been through an enormous ordeal."
From Green Left Weekly, July 30, 2003.
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