Stevens was employed as a casual plant operator by Mining and Earthmoving Services (MES) at an open-cut (surface) mine in the Hunter Valley, 150 miles north of Sydney. She had just completed a two-week training course when the boss of the contract company handed her an AWA, saying she had to sign.

Stevens traveled to Sydney July 9 to meet Alyson Kennedy, a visiting U.S. coal miner who was one of the leaders of a three-year union-organizing battle at the Co-Op mine in Utah.

In an interview, Stevens said she had received her union card the day she was fired and called the union after being pressured to sign the AWA. Stevens told the bosses she “was in the union and had nothing to say to them about the AWA.” The MES human resources manager threatened to “make sure I would never work in a Hunter Valley mine again,” she recounted.

Two of the worst provisions in the AWA were having to pay a A$200 fine (US$150) and losing a day’s wages for failure to give 12 hours’ notice for any absence for illness, and being billed for costs of the company induction (training) program.

Another worker given an AWA at the same time also refused to sign. The bosses didn’t try to sack him after Stevens had publicly resisted her dismissal.

Stevens said she thought the company had picked on her because of her youth. “Maybe they thought I wouldn’t read it,” she said. “It’s not because I’m a woman,” she insisted. About 30 women work in the mine. The company wants to employ more female workers because “women are better operators,” she stated.

Stevens said she comes from a family with a tradition in mining and in the union. Most miners where she worked are union members. She had been training for five years to get in the mines and had gained all possible certificates for driving open-cut mining machinery.

With the backing of the mining division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), and the support of family and friends, Stevens is taking her case to the federal court. “We want to nail the company,” she said.

Stevens was welcomed with a standing ovation at a New South Wales Teachers’ Federation stop-work meeting in Sydney July 4, where she spoke about her case.

She explained that the MES individual contract forced on her had been freshly written under new industrial relations laws. These antiunion laws, in effect since March, are being used to attack wages and working conditions previously protected by federal law. Between April and June more than 40,000 workers were forced or induced to sign individual contracts. About 5 percent of the workforce is now on AWAs.

In Perth, Western Australia, 107 construction workers, members of the CFMEU, have each been fined almost A$30,000 (US$22,550) over their defiance of a strike ban imposed by the bosses’ courts. The workers struck for 12 days in March after their shop steward, Peter Ballard, was sacked over an ongoing industrial dispute.
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. coal miner tours New Zealand
Court dismisses Utah coal boss lawsuit  
 
 
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