Vol. 75/No. 2      January 17, 2011

Workers employed by the company will receive wages and holiday pay owed them, plus redundancy (unemployment) compensation. Those employed for more than a year should receive severance pay. However, miners working as contractors are designated “unsecured creditors” and might receive nothing. The receivers announced December 23 that the outstanding wages of 13 contractors killed in the mine would be paid up to the November 19 date of the explosion.

Receivers were called in by Pike River’s biggest creditor, New Zealand Oil and Gas, which acted to protect its assets. As a secured creditor, it will be paid ahead of others. Coking coal in the mine is estimated to be worth $4 billion.

Former workers at the mine and families of the deceased have formed a committee to represent them. “The families and workers to date have sat back and listened to everything being done, but now want to have a voice,” said elected spokesman Bernie Monk, whose son Michael was killed in the disaster.

Monk noted that contract miners were among those who “worked 18-20 hours a day to try and get our loved ones out and then to be told that they’re in receivership and they’ve got no money—I’m just gutted for them.” Workers and businesses that supplied equipment and services to the recovery effort are also among those unlikely to be reimbursed.

The Pike River mine is in the Paparoa mountain range, 30 miles northeast of Greymouth on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island. The region has been the center of coal mining in this country for more than a century.

Authorities say it will be at least several months before it may be safe to reenter the mine because of continuing high gas levels and extreme heat after a coal fire raged through the mine.

Several inquiries into the mine disaster are under way, including a royal commission of inquiry announced by the government.

Some 11,000 people turned out in Greymouth December 2 for an official memorial service for the 29 dead miners. Speakers included New Zealand governor-general Anand Satyanand, National Party prime minister John Key, and Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall. Other government and opposition politicians attended.

Speaking several days later, Les Neilson, a working miner and unionist at the nearby Spring Creek mine, told journalists that “you see some of them sitting on the stage at the remembrance service and there are some guilty-looking people sitting there as far as I’m concerned.”

Neilson was referring to the repeal of coal mining legislation in the early 1990s that dismantled the mining inspectorate. “We’ve tried for years to get proper legislation brought back in,” he said, noting that the two main political parties, National and Labour, are each “as guilty as the other” in resisting union efforts to increase safety.

The 1992 Health and Safety in Employment Act took away the right of workers and unions to enforce safety on the job and to refuse dangerous work. The law change put mine safety in the hands of the police and Occupational Safety and Health, a government department.

Protesting that change at the time, mine inspector Billy Brazil noted that previous mining legislation had been “literally written and paid for in blood.”

A former Pike River miner, Brent Forrester, told the December 5 television news program Sunday of miners’ concerns leading up to the explosion. “There have been gas issues, there have been ventilation issues,” he said. “This was totally preventable, in my opinion.”

Today there are just three mines inspectors for the whole country and one for oil exploration. Responding to the erosion of mine safety, the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, which organizes coal miners, has been campaigning for the return of mine inspectors who are on site at all mines and check safety before the start of each shift.
 
 
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