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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-07-29 Daily Xml
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Mining Employment

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:34): I rise today to talk about employment. Another round of job losses have been announced at Arrium's mining operations in the Middleback Ranges, 50 kilometres to the west of Whyalla. The main mining contractor, BGC, has announced that, commencing in October, 65 jobs will go at Iron Knob and 60 jobs in the Southern Middleback mines.

The job losses come on top of the previously announced cutbacks. The combined impact of job losses in the electorate of Giles, taking into account lay-offs at Olympic Dam, Hawks Nest, the Middleback mine sites, the steelworks and the region's smaller contractors, is somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs. Some of the direct impact on the region has been diluted by the fly-in fly-out nature of mine sites such as Hawks Nest. The mine sites at the Middleback Ranges, however, depend on a local workforce largely resident in Whyalla but also in some of the smaller communities in the region, such as Cowell.

It is worth bearing in mind, based on figures given to me last week by Arrium, that the iron operations in the Middleback Ranges provide up to 1,500 jobs. I have some reasons to doubt that figure, but it is at least 1,000 jobs. That is why I wake up every morning and look at the iron ore price. The softening of Chinese demand and the ramping up of supply by the three major iron ore companies is deeply worrying.

What is a bad situation has been made worse by the major mining contractor at the Middleback sites, BGC. Each round of lay-offs have been preceded by weeks of rumour and speculation, with the rumour invariably accurate. BGC has been publicly criticised for its approach to redundancies: its lack of communication, consultation and the provision of timely information. Scott Martin, organiser with the AWU in Whyalla, has pointed out that BGC is the only major company in Whyalla and the region that makes little attempt to involve parties that will be affected by redundancies. He went on to say that workers are left in the dark and constantly looking over their shoulders.

The AWU points out that Arrium and OneSteel, when faced with redundancies, as a first step, bring stakeholders together to discuss and work through the options. Other unions, such as the AMWU and the CFMEU, with members at the mine sites, voice the same criticism of BGC, as do individual workers I have spoken to.

Everyone understands the pressure the iron export industry is under and everyone understands, painful though it is, that jobs will be lost in order to address very challenging times. For the junior iron ore miners it is a case of battening down the hatches in the hope of weathering the storm and getting through with a viable business. Despite the efforts to reduce costs there are no guarantees.

The last thing we need when going through a very difficult period for the workers involved, their families and Whyalla, is a company that communicates and consults poorly. Even when it comes to providing basic information on what programs might be available to assist workers who are made redundant, BGC has not been helpful. There are a number of state government programs, such as the WorkReady worker transition program, to assist with training and advice that workers made redundant can access. BGC has been less than helpful in taking up on the offer to directly provide that information to workers who will be laid off.

Over 30 per cent of the employment base in Whyalla is made up of manufacturing and mining, with manufacturing still the largest employer. Most of the jobs in other industry sectors are dependent in one way or another on those jobs. It is not the benefits spruiked by Business SA when it comes to a half-hour shift in our time zone that is exercising the minds of the people in the communities that I represent. In Whyalla and in Roxby Downs it is jobs, the jobs that have been lost and the jobs that will be lost. That is what is exercising people's minds.

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