Published in the March 2013 Australian Longwall Magazine
When I started my mining career in England back in 1974, Markham Main Colliery in South Yorkshire employed 1500 men and women, who together produced around 20,000 tonnes a week of coal from three longwalls and six developments. Impressive, huh?
Perhaps a little more detail is warranted here.
Markham Main Colliery employed about 1492 men and eight women (about 0.5% of the total workforce) mining the Barnsley seam at a depth of around 850m.
Heatings (spontaneous combustion), firedamp (methane), afterdamp or whitedamp (carbon monoxide), massive roadway deformation (floor heave and roof falls) were just part of everyday life.
The legislation in the UK at that time did not permit the employment of women (or children) underground.
If I recall correctly, the eight women consisted of the general manager’s secretary, a full-time nurse (no not the GM’s secretary), and six “canteen ladies”
Every colliery in those days had a 24-hour canteen serving marvellous cheese and onion butties, questionable meat pies, indescribable cornish pasties and mugs of hot tea.
How times have changed. In the early 1970s there were around 250 collieries employing 250,000 people in the coal industry of the UK. Today there are four collieries and less than 3000 people but still very few women.
In the mid-1980s, during my time with Dowty, I visited several mines in Eastern Europe. My most vivid memories are of Bobovdol mine in Bulgaria.
The then-communist state employed some 6000 people (probably around 40% were women) working six longwalls and numerous developments.
Production figures I don’t recall but if the mine didn’t produce enough coal for the local power station, the lights went out.
Bobovdol mine had extremely challenging conditions (similar to Markham Main) but you could add earthquakes into the mix too.
The communist regime boasted zero unemployment in Bulgaria and use of people was not particularly efficient. Wages and productivity were very low.
What was noticable (compared to the UK) was that women were employed throughout the mine in a wide variety of roles.
I have also been privileged to visit South Africa on many occasions and the situation there has also changed in the years since my first visit.
When I first went there 12 years ago, women occupied surface roles but not many underground roles.
This has changed in part due to equality legislation but very few women seem to occupy management roles.
The situation in Australia is very different in virtually every respect.
In the late ‘80s when I first worked in the Australian coal industry, there were very few women employed by the coal mines.
However, this has changed dramatically and today women occupy numerous engineering, management, technical and scientific roles in underground mining – and the percentage is growing.
I have the privilege once a year of “lecturing” to mining diploma students on the topic of longwall management at the University of New South Wales.
These are predominantly graduate geotechnical engineers and geologists.
In 2006 about 20% of the students were women. In 2012, it was about 50%.
In my view, this increase is in part due to the demand for people in the “mining boom” but is also attributable to a big shift in our culture and attitudes.
At the end of the day, gender is unimportant if you can perform the task at hand.
In the Australian coal industry, women are not employed to make up the numbers, or simply to satisfy some bureaucratic regulation or government quota.
Women are in mining based on their ability to do the job and the percentage growth proves that point.
I have been very fortunate to have met and worked with many outstanding men and women in the Australian mining industry who bring considerable skills, talent and professionalism to our industry.
However, when it comes to multitasking … it is a scientific fact.
How about an all-female longwall crew? Now that would be interesting.
