Explosion inquiry: Anglo miners have bonus slashed for reporting injuries
Labour hire workers at the troubled Grosvenor coal mine can be docked $100 from their bonus if one of their colleagues gets injured and reports it.
Labour hire workers at mining giant Anglo American’s troubled Grosvenor coalmine can be docked $100 from their monthly performance bonus if one of their colleagues is injured and reports it to company management.
Queensland’s coalmining board of inquiry investigating a methane explosion at the central Queensland mine on May 6 that badly injured five labour hire miners heard Anglo pays the contractors a performance bonus, which averages between $1000 and $4000 a month.
Anglo American metallurgical coal head of human resources Warwick Jones said the 400 One Key workers at the Grosvenor site received extra cash the further mining equipment advanced each month.
Conversely, the labour hire workers — 76 per cent of all Grosvenor employees, comprising most of those working underground at the coal face — are hit with safety penalties for some reported injuries.
Counsel assisting the inquiry, Jeff Hunter QC, asked Mr Jones: “Let’s just say I’m working on a shift and I use an incorrect manual lifting technique and I hurt my back. If I report that injury, I know that I run the risk of doing everyone else on site who is a labour hire worker out of, what, potentially $100?”
Mr Jones: “Yes.”
Mr Hunter: “You said ... you thought it was unlikely people would sit or stand silently by and allow safety matters to go unreported, but that’s a perfect example of what could happen, do you agree?”
Mr Jones: “It could, but I think you’ve also got to put it in the context of the culture that you’ve got at the operation, and all of the messaging and important reinforcing ... of the importance to report incidents and injuries.”
The bonus scheme for One Key workers at Grosvenor is not formally documented by Anglo American, the inquiry heard, and operates at “management discretion”, but workers are directly informed about the possibility of earning more money based on their rate of production.
Mr Hunter: “So everyone would know that the faster you advance or retreat (underground), the more you get paid?”
Mr Jones: “There is an impact on bonus, absolutely, yes.”
Mr Jones said when Anglo American was planning the Grosvenor mine, in central Queensland’s Bowen Basin, in 2013, it decided a workforce based mostly on labour hire and contractors would be the most productive and cost-effective. He said there was no difference in safety performance between the labour hire model and company-employed coalmine workers.
CFMEU state president and veteran underground miner Stephen Smyth, who has been watching the inquiry, said Mr Jones’s testimony was proof that majority-labour hire workforces created a culture of under-reporting of safety issues. “We’ve got insecure work, some (labour hire workers) are employed by the hour, or by the day, and for them, every cent counts, aside from the fact they might lose a bonus, they might also not report a safety issue because they’re worried about the insecurity of their work,” he said. Performance bonuses should not have in-built safety penalties, he added.