How do you sleep at night, nickel worker’s wife asks Clive Palmer

Workers at Clive Palmer’s refinery are living in fear, scared of losing jobs and scared to speak out publicly against their boss.

8/12/2015: A worker from at the troubled Queensland Nickel refinery and his partner, too fearful to be identified, and extremely worried about their future, at their home, just north of Townsville, QLD. Clive Palmer now to links the plants future to the QLD State Government providing financial security on the companies loans . Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

Workers at Clive Palmer’s nickel refinery are living in fear. The 776 Yabulu workers are not only scared of losing their jobs, they’re scared of speaking out publicly against their litigious boss.

“I personally feel like a pawn in a bigger fight,” a refinery worker told The Australian in Townsville yesterday, on con­dition of anonymity.

“Clive Palmer personally ­assured us, as a workforce, in Oct­ober that our jobs were safe. Now, not two months later, we’re in this position. Personally, I don’t believe him when he says he’ll be forced to shut us down.

“We haven’t had a pay rise since 2011, and we now know he’s taken money out of the refinery to fund his political party. I know he’ll be having a great Christmas, but my partner and I won’t be, and other workers won’t be.”

The north Queensland city is on tenterhooks, waiting to find out the fate of its biggest private employer, which injects $1.3 billion a year into a local economy already hit hard by the drought, the mining downturn and high unemployment.

Workers are banned from speaking to the media, and even former staff have told The Australian they won’t talk publicly about the refinery for fear of being sued by Mr Palmer.

The refinery worker said if the plant were to shut down and workers were not paid entitlements, he’d have to leave the city to look for work in a mine. “I’d have no choice, with the debt I’m carrying. It’s pretty stressful. If I lost my entitlements and didn’t get another job straight away, I’d be looking at bankruptcy.”

The worker was made redundant by former refinery owners BHP before Mr Palmer swooped in to save the ailing plant in 2009. The following year, he spent $10m on Christmas bonuses of Mercedes-Benz cars and overseas holidays. Such largesse is a distant memory.

Workers at the plant fear if they lose their jobs, they won’t get another in Townsville’s depressed economy.

Of Mr Palmer’s claims, the worker’s partner said: “At the end of the day, is it smoke and mirrors? Is it another strategy? How does he sleep at night?”