Workers at trouble-plagued West Gate Tunnel shown the door amid fears project will be two years late

The crisis-plagued West Gate Tunnel has hit another snag, and now workers are facing the axe.

Tunnelling for the crisis-plagued West Gate Tunnel won’t get underway until mid-2021 amid concerns the $6.7 billion toll road has slipped two years behind schedule.

Hundreds of jobs are now hanging in the balance on one section of the project, with work drying up due to an ongoing toxic soil crisis that began in the middle of last year.

Up to 70 positions in the eastern zone — which runs from Footscray Rd through to CityLink and Wurundjeri Way — are being made redundant in the new year.

As Christmas approaches and the economic impact of COVID-19 continues, project builders CPB and John Holland have been warned to redeploy workers, while some may be sent to other road and rail sites.

A worker on the West Gate Tunnel site in Melbourne. Picture: Alex Coppel.

A major legal fight that erupted when CPB/John Holland tried to break its contract with project proponent Transurban this year is yet to be resolved, with the fresh delays threatening hundreds more jobs that could be culled until major works can begin.

When contracts were signed in late 2017 for the toll road, it was supposed to open in 2022.
Transurban told shareholders this year that the road won’t be operating until 2023.

But multiple sources at the project said with no tunnelling still underway and unlikely for months, timelines were becoming shakier.

“If tunnelling doesn’t start until July and it takes 30 months to complete and finish, we could be looking at 2024,” one source said.

A state government spokeswoman said there was a “power of work underway on the West Gate tunnel Project” such as a 24/7, five-day shutdown of the West Gate Freeway to demolish the Grieve Parade Bridge and rebuild it.
“There is no reason whatsoever for Transurban’s builders CPB and John Holland to sack workers — especially weeks away from Christmas,” she said.

The spokeswoman said the government has a contract with Transurban, which advised the stock market the project would be open in 2023.

“Transurban entered into a deal with its builders, CPB and John Holland and they’ve had three years to find a spoil site – it’s their failure and they need to fix it.”

The move to lay off workersin the lead up to Christmas has been slammed by Infrastructure Minister Jacinta Allan.

In response to the news that up to 70 workers would be let go from the job Ms Allan instead called for all of them to be redeployed.

“On the eve of Christmas for this action to be taken in any year is very poor form. It’s even poorer form when you consider the year that we have had,” Ms Allan said on Thursday.

“Transurban, CPB and John Holland have advised they are offering redeployment to some workers and I would expect that to happen,

“I would point out that there is so much work going on in the West Gate project that there is no need for these redundancies to take place.”

Despite the move Ms Allan said she had not received advice that the project would be delayed further than the current opening date of 2023.

Plans for the westgate tunnel project in Melbourne. Image supplied.

The Herald Sun revealed earlier this year that hundreds of millions of dollars had been provided by the state government to help pay for transport of contaminated soil to specially-designed landfill sites.

But this solution was dealt a blow on Tuesday when the Environment Protection Authority admitted its permit for a landfill site at Bacchus Marsh to take contaminated spoil was invalid.

The EPA had granted a “conditional” approval to the site but had no legal power to do so.

The authority is now assessing whether its permits for two other sites are also invalid.

The Opposition on Wednesday narrowly lost a vote in the state’s Upper House to block planning approval for the Bacchus Marsh site, as residents protested outside parliament.

Ms Allan said the vote was putting at risk the more than 3000 jobs of those working on the project ahead of Christmas.

Project sources said while there were nowhere near that number of workers on site at the moment “there should two or three thousand at this stage”.

A dedicated pre-casting facility out at Benalla is also under strain as concrete tunnel segments and other vital parts begin to pile up.

Many of these parts cannot travel on the rail siding specially built to help supply the West Gate Tunnel, with 80 per cent of trips now made on CityLink.

Originally published as Workers at trouble-plagued West Gate Tunnel shown the door amid fears project will be two years late