MACKAY MACKAY MACKAY REGION & REGION & REGION & COAL COAL COAL

Coal industry Coal industry

There's plenty happening in the mining sector, with a shortage of skilled workers, the mining companies are scrambling to secure workers to keep their operations running

Currently (at time of writing) negotiating first and second tier operators Enterprise Agreements, the ETU has secured some major changes in recent months, especially within the BHP Coal (BMA) Agreement which will need to be the new level for agreements moving forward

Olive Downs has commenced the construction phase but still only getting started This work will be ongoing for (approx) two years Thiess has the operations of the mine once up and running

During the 1990’s the Southern Division of QR’s Workshops which then consisted of significant operations at the historical North Ipswich Workshops as well as Redbank and Banyo, went through a restructuring and downsizing to consolidate operations onto the Redbank Site To help deal with the impact on employees the Unions were able to achieve the temporary appointment of a number of Peer Supporters whose role was to provide advice and assistance to their fellow workers who were considering their options for a career change either within QR or with alternative employers or even redundancy Given his experience Jeffrey was a natural choice and was appointed to one of the Peer Supporter positions from 1996 to 1998.

Over all these years Jeffrey was heavily involved with his local ALP Branch But with great disappointment he decided to resign his membership in 2010 after the Bligh State Government proceeded with the selloff of State Government assets which included QR’s Freight, Coal and Workshops operations

Jeffrey’s commitment to serving his fellow workers is also demonstrated by his long involvement with the Redbank Workshops Canteen Committee which provided a facility on site where a considerable range of food and drinks etc was available for purchase

Another thing that Jeffrey was passionate about was maintaining good morale and comradery amongst his fellow workers So as well as all his other activities he also took a leading role in the site’s Social Club, organising raffles and other fund raising and social events for fellow workers to participate in

Jeffrey retired from employment with Aurizon as it is now known in 2011

So as you can see much of Jeffrey’s life was committed to serving his fellow workers Sadly QR’s Railway Workshops no longer exist and many who worked there over the years may have mixed memories of their time there, but surely the good memories will be because of people like Jeffrey Murphy. RIP Murph.

Article contributed by Clive Cooke, Shop Steward, Redbank Railway Workshops 1983 – 2012

Contracting Contracting

There's not much happening at the moment in the Mackay region for construction There are some smaller ongoing jobs including service stations and re-fits of buildings, but nothing on a project scale except Olive Downs

Olive Downs is not on the same scale as the Carmichael Mine project, and there is no enterprise agreement in place With multiple contractors on the site, there may be issues throughout the works

Membership info Membership info

During a recent round of site visits, it was identified that we had members with incorrect details on the ETU membership system, I urge every member reading this journal to make sure their employer and personal details are up to date so that we can make sure we get relevant information to members and if needed, we can provide updates on matters relating to their employer