Consisting of about a six hour stoppage at each site, union organised mass meetings will be held at the Norwich Park and Saraji mines on Tuesday, at the Gregory, Crinum and Blackwater mines on Wednesday and at the Peak Downs and Goonyella Riverside mines on Saturday.
The meetings will provide union leaders the opportunity to discuss the status of the enterprise agreement negotiations and gather feedback from union members.
While BMA’s workforce at each mine has a 30 day period of protected industrial action, there are opportunities to extend this period under the Fair Work Act.
The protected industrial action is based on the four questions that were overwhelmingly passed in the protected action ballot last week.
Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union Queensland district president Stephen Smyth indicated all of the industrial action measures proposed in the four questions would need to be used for a longer industrial campaign.
“If we use all four and then we apply prior to the [protected industrial] action expiring, then we can keep applying for protected industrial action,” he told ILN.
These measures include taking consecutive work stoppages of 24 hours in duration and bans on working non-rostered overtime.
Smyth said the union would meet with BMA management today at Goonyella Riverside to discuss site schedules, while the next EA negotiations with the company would be on June 20-21.
He expects that round of EA talks to be more “fruitful”.
Meanwhile, BMA is making its own attempts to engage the workforce.
“I am obviously disappointed the unions have elected to take this premature action and worried about the distress and harm such action will cause for our people, their families and indeed our business, particularly at a time when we are still recovering from this year’s unprecedented floods,” BMA asset president Stephen Dumble said in a statement.
“Last Friday [June 3], in an effort to show our good faith and accelerate negotiations, BMA confirmed a wages offer for its employees that includes a 5 per cent annual pay increase in addition to a $5,000 sign on bonus.”
In response to Dumble’s disappointment, Smyth said BMA had refused to allow stop-work meetings despite several requests.
These meetings give the CFMEU the opportunity to discuss EA negotiations with miners, and Smyth added BMA had allowed three hour, stop-work meetings several years ago.
Ongoing negotiations over the new BMA central EA covering the seven mines started around November/December and this encompassing EA expired on May 16.
Unlike other previous disputes over EAs in the mining industry, the CFMEU has teamed up with the Electrical Trades Union and Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union to form a Single Bargaining Unit with BMA over the central agreement.
