Fair Work Commission rules against BHP, but ignores wage theft

While BHP was ordered to pay a fair fee to contractors, FWC ignored more serious wage theft problems and provided justice to the noticers. Stephanie Tran investigates.

One turning point decision This week, the Fair Labor Commission (FWC) decided against the mining giant BHP and ordered the company to pay the same wages and conditions as the personnel directly employed to the workers. The decision is valid for workers in the three Queensland coal mine and is expected to cost the company for about $ 66 million a year. If the BHP is extended between all coal operations, the compliance cost can reach $ 1.3 billion per year.

The decision is greeting as a great gain for the workers and the union movement behind the Albanian government. “Same job, the same fee” lawsIt cannot address a much larger, unresolved problem: billions of wages stolen from coal miners in the last twenty years.

Simon Turner, former BHP Labour-Hire worker, said, the decision of the last Fair Labor Commission may seem like a long step towards the correction of illegal workers’ rental practices in the coal mining industry, ”he said.

In 2015, Turner was injured on Arthur Coal Maden Mountain in Hunter Valley of BHP. He’s been fighting for compensation since then.

“The decision of the Commission acknowledges that the workers have known and lived for more than a decade: the labor rental companies such as Chandler Macleod and Workpac did not serve.

BHP’s Great Wage Theft | Western Report

2015 Business Agreement

In February 2015, CFMEU filed a lawsuit for a fair business commission against Chandler Macleod, the Black Coal Mining Industry Award for the minimum requirements under 2010. Complaint: “[Chandler Macleod] MT Arthur Coal mine have more than 100 employees working in the mine and they deprive these employees of the conditions to be given to full -time employees. “

On April 13, 2014, Cfmeu met with Chandler Macleod and agreed to solve the issue under the following conditions:

“CFMEU, Chandler Macleod companies, who are currently carrying out black coal mining production activities, the employees associated with the“ quitting and other rights ”, employees,“ quitting and other rights ın of the employees, employees will accept to stop the “abandonment and other rights” of the “abandonment and other rights”.

Later, in June 2015, FWC approved a business agreement prepared by Chandler Macleod and negotiated and approved by CFMEU.

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The agreement allowed BHP to pay significantly less than the rates determined by the Black Coal Award to workers. Pursuant to this award, coal miners cannot be legally employed daily and corporate agreements should have a better general test (boots) to ensure that businesses are worse than the relevant award.

He did not make a business agreement. FWC later admitted that no boot evaluation was made under the conditions of the business agreement.

“The truth is,” Turner said,

FWC Greenlit and the industrial fraud they claim to have now condemned.

A Stopped Class Action

Turner, BHP and Chandler applied to Macleod, the 2018 class action, where only 1200 workers in that mine have the right to compensation. He tried to recover millions at unpaid wages for coal miners classified as wrong. However, after Turner’s lawyers in Aden Law, the action was stopped quietly in 2022 He misled the court about who the real employer was in the trial.

The legal team stated that Turner was employed by the ready labor force.Chandler Macleod is a subsidiary of the 2007 agreement. In fact, Turner was employed by Chandler Macleod under the Black Coal award, which had to make it suitable for the scope and rights of the award. The error weakened the case in a fatal way.

Turner claims that his lawyers did not make a decision that deliberately proves that his employer is Chandler Macleod. The decision in question is 2017 decision About a negative claim by his colleague Lisa Zoppellarro. Ready to work as ready -made labor or Chandler found that Hakim Chandler Macleod was actually an employer.

“My original 2018 class action statement proves that I have been from the beginning,” Turner said. “Employment was not daily, and I was within the scope of the Black Coal Mining Industry Award. However, the court was misleaded by my own lawyers BHP and Chandler Macleod, who claimed to have been employed by ready labor force under a 2007 agreement that was not implemented incorrectly.

It is currently in the process of making a new request in the Federal Court to reopen the case. “I lost my house, I lost everything. I’m constantly suffering. My injuries caused me to work again.”

No solution

There is no clear way for workers to recover these historical losses. The new “same work, the same wage” laws aim to prevent future exploitation, but not to do anything to correct the past.

“Businesses try to reduce costs can be understood,” BHP said James Joseph, who flys information. “However, it needs to be legally done in a legally ethical way.

Over the years, the BHP became famous for finding the most unethical gaps for lower cut workers.

“For a company that earns such huge profits, for a company that remains in the sea in the form of foreign dividends, it may be quite disappointing to underline Australian workers.”

According to Sam Stephens, who also works in the MT Arthur mine of BHP, low payment is not isolated for a group or for me.

“Everyone is low,” he said. “Full -time or daily ones are low -paid, all workers’ rental workers. Nobody wants to accept it because then they will have to open a box of worms.”

BHP did not respond to a comment request.

Same work, lame share: BHP and black coal fee swindle

Stephanie is a journalist and has a degree of law/journalism. The 2021 Walkley won the Finalist of the Student Journalist of the Year Award and the 2021 Democracy Waiting for Student Investigation Report Award.