BY DOUG COOPER
SYDNEY, Australia- Some 12,000 coal miners waged a successful strike throughout New South Wales from November 28 to December 2 blocking attempts to cut their workers' compensation payments by 25 percent.

The United Mine Workers strike came in the context of a broadside attack by the state Labor government on workers' compensation entitlements and cost the coal bosses an estimated $A50 million ($US40 million) in lost revenue.

The Labor government of state Premier Robert Carr, with support from the opposition Liberal and National parties, as well as other, smaller capitalist parties and independents, passed legislation November 26 to "rescue" the deficit-ridden WorkCover state workers' compensation system.

Key parts include cutting workers' lump-sum payments for work-related injuries or illnesses by 25 percent, putting the burden of proof on workers to show that their job was a "significant contributing factor" to an illness or injury, and an automatic review of weekly entitlement payments every two years where workers will have to prove they should continue to receive compensation. Most workers fall under the WorkCover system.

Coal miners would have been exempt from the cuts because they are covered by a separate insurance system, known as the Coal Mines Insurance fund, with its own benefit payments, inspectors, and costs to coal companies. But the opposition parties succeeded in passing an amendment to the government's legislation that forced the changes on all workers whether they fall under WorkCover or not.

Militant action by United Mine Workers members over the years has won significantly higher benefits than other workers. For example, miners receive an average $A830 a week for the first 39 weeks of total disability compared to an average $A550 for workers with a similar disability in other industries covered under WorkCover.

In the face of an indefinite strike, independent and third-party members of parliament backed a December 3 government resolution overturning the opposition amendment that would have subjected miners to the same cuts as other workers. Moves to also exempt forestry, construction and other workers involved in high-risk industries failed.

The action in state Parliament was the immediate spark for the four-day strike, but the deaths of four UMW members two weeks earlier at the Gretley Colliery near Newcastle, in the worst coal mining disaster in thirty years in this state, lay behind miners' anger. The amendment to the government's bill was passed as 400 people packed a November 27 union-sponsored Newcastle memorial service for Mark Kaiser, John Hunter, Damon Murray, and Edward Batterham. Miners were particularly outraged at the presence of the leader of the state opposition, Peter Collins, at the service.

New facts are emerging on the November 14 Gretley Colliery disaster. The four miners were killed operating a continuous miner, the standard mining machine, after breaking through into a disused shaft flooded with hundreds of tons of water. Four other miners, who were nearby on break, narrowly escaped as the flood came within a meter of the roof of the shaft.

Robert Martin, the minister for mineral resources in the Carr government, was forced to drop a Department of Mineral Resources inquiry and order an inquiry by a district court judge following assertions by Jack Tapp, the UMW Northern District's chief safety inspector, that maps supplied by the department were mislabeled and inaccurate. "The integrity of the government is at stake," Martin told ABC radio.

Gretley Colliery is owned by Oakbridge Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Cyprus, a U.S. mining company.

Tapp is part of a nearly completed separate inquiry being conducted by the UMW division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. He told the Militant that the safety requirement to test drill before carrying out mining operations within 35 meters of other seams or shafts would not have come into play at Gretley, since the four miners were using maps that indicated they were 150 meters away.

The judicial inquiry is scheduled to begin January 9.

Doug Cooper is a member of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees' Union.  
 
 
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