While booming coal prices and record productivity have sparked billion dollar profits for the companies that dominate Australia’s mining industry, NSW coal mineworkers are still entrenched in a bitter fight for greater safety conditions and standards.

Our Union’s safety campaign has brought us to the brink of industrial action several times recently as mining companies continue to insist that they be exempt from being held accountable for criminal and negligent actions that lead to deaths and injuries in the State’s coal mines.

At present, one of the world’s most powerful and richest coal companies, Xstrata, is engaged in a NSW Supreme Court challenge to the State’s health and safety laws following successful prosecutions that led to the NSW Industrial Commission imposing a record $1.47M fine on Xstrata over the deaths of four coal miners at the company’s Gretley Colliery in 1996.

The record fines were handed down on 11 March and within three days Xstrata lodged its appeal to overturn the criminal provisions in the NSW occupational health and safety laws. Xstrata, which has just declared a record $1.04 billion profit for the first six months of this year, has deep pockets and has already spent an estimated $20 million in legal fees to fight the Gretley prosecutions.

Xstrata is supported in its challenge by the other powerful coal mining companies through the NSW Minerals Council. These include BHP Billiton, which has just declared a record $8.3 billion profit, and Rio Tinto, which is on track for a record $5 billion-plus profit.

These powerful companies are attempting to exonerate employers who kill people at work. They are seeking to exempt themselves from laws that apply to everyone else in the community. They are seeking to restore the historical status quo in which mining companies in Australia have literally gotten away with murder.

It has taken 200 years and the deaths of an estimated 3,000 NSW coal miners before a mining company has been successfully prosecuted for OHS breaches in NSW.

And they don’t like it.

For them, and us, the successful Gretley prosecutions are a watershed. The mining companies now fear that they will be held accountable for OHS breaches that leads to the loss of miners lives.

Xstrata has shown just how high the stakes are by using every legal avenue to avoid facing the court and then when that failed to try and deny the right of the court to convict criminally culpable employers. In November 2003, Xstrata attempted to exploit a technical loophole in the Gretley case and have it dismissed because the wrong NSW Minister had signed the documents instigating the prosecutions. To its credit, the NSW Government introduced retrospective legislation to redress this.

The Gretley story

On 14 November 1996 four coal miners – Edward Batterham, 48; John Hunter, 36; Mark Kaiser, 30; and Damon Murray, 19 – were killed when a massive inrush of water flooded the section of the Gretley mine where they were working. The men never had a chance. The maps that management were working from were wrong and the four men paid the price for this with their lives.

In the coronial and judicial inquiries that followed it was revealed that mine managers had ignored repeated warnings that water was leaking into the shaft where the men were working. Judge Staunton, who presided over the Inquiry, said that the shortcomings in the company were so widespread they affected every level of management.

Although Judge Staunton handed down his findings in 1998, it took a further two years to deliver the case for prosecutions and it wasn’t until 9 August 2004 that the company and individuals responsible for events that led to the tragic deaths of the four coal mineworkers were convicted of 32 breaches of the NSW Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The decision brought great relief to the families who had endured more than seven years of fighting for justice. For our Union is was a great result heralding at last that mining companies and management would be held to account for criminal negligence at work.

But is has turned out to be a short lived victory. In deciding to challenge the laws in March this year, Xstrata and the mining companies that support it are drawing their line in the sand. Almost nine years after the Gretley disaster, mining companies are still demanding immunity from proper legal enforcement of the State’s health and safety laws.

The Gretley case also focused industry and public attention on the rate and nature of injuries in the State’s coal mines. The NSW Government responded to the Union’s concern by commissioning former Premier Neville Wran to conduct a review on coal mine safety in NSW. Our Union welcomed Wran’s recommendations and the State Government’s commitment to implement them.

But these commitments are not worth the paper they are written on without adequate resources to implement them and the political will to deliver them.

The ball is now in the court of the new Minister responsible for the coal industry, Ian McDonald.
Our members expect the State Government to provide sufficient funding to pursue prosecutions for breaches of safety standards. This should not be just limited to those who are responsible for deaths in the industry – there also needs to be adequate funds to ensure enforcement of penalties against those whose breaches of safety laws lead to the spate of serious injuries that is plaguing the State’s coal industry.

Coal mining is internationally recognised as the most hazardous industry in the world. The workers in it need all the protection they can get. The workers are entitled to expect nothing less from a Labor Government nor will our Union settle for anything less.