Teachers On Strike Over Staff Shortage

BY JARROD MELMETH

Staff have walked off the job at Newcastle Senior School over concerns about staff shortages.

The Union reports there have been more than 20 unfilled teacher absences at Newcastle Senior School this year and teachers are fed up with the disruption staff shortages are having on teaching and learning programs.

The school specialises in the education of children with an intellectual disability which requires an intensive amount of work for teachers.

NSW Teachers Federation Deputy President Henry Rajendra says having insufficient staff places a huge burden on teachers and affects the provision of curriculum across the school.

"The teacher shortage is impacting on the ability of staff to take leave of seek professional learning opportunities.

"Students are missing out on the education they deserve due to lack of staffing, including casual teacher relief.

"The Gallop inquiry into the work of teachers found earlier this year that uncompetitive salaries for teachers and unsustainable workloads are leading to teacher shortages

"The workloads of teachers have increased every year, but their salaries have fallen every year compared to other professions," Mr Rajendra said.

The Union says it isn't ruling out further action if these simple requests are not met.

Mining workers rally against Glencore, no result yet

BY LAUREN FREEMANTLE

Efforts to strike an agreement between mining company Glencore and its dissatisfied employees have so far failed, with tensions coming to a head yesterday at Singleton Showground.

Glencore employees, members of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), gathered at the Showground on Tuesday to rally for new enterprise agreements after the expiration of previous agreements.

Around 1300 union members were present and calling for greater job security, higher redundancy pay and a lessening of the use of contractors within the company.

With three work stoppages at the mining giant's Hunter Valley open cut sites, Northern District President of the CFMEU, Peter Jordan, believes the 12-week disagreement has been detrimental to Glencore's productivity.

"I think it's had a major effect on their production, that's our understanding of it," he said, "They're having problems with their shipments and we're told by other coal proprietors [Glencore] are busily in contact with them for the purposes of purchasing coal to meet their shipments.

"They may have their standard line that they say to the media," Mr Jordan continued, "that the industrial action has had minimal impact on them and they're continuing to operate safely, but the fact of the matter is that's not what's reality on the job."

Mr Jordan said the union passed three resolutions yesterday in a unanimous vote. "Firstly, that the district will continue to be directed by its 1400 members to call further aggregate meetings in the event that we're not able to progress the negotiations.

"Secondly, the individual mine sites in the meantime would continue to implement stoppages and other industrial action to bring about a successful agreement.

"And thirdly, the 1300 members in attendance made it very clear they wanted to call on Glencore to come to the table and deliver on the key issues at hand."

Glencore's Ravensworth, Glendell, Mangoola, Bulga and Liddell mines are among those whose workers are being represented by the union.

Tuesday's rally at Singleton Showground. Image Source: Singleton Argus. 

Union Hopes to Secure 80 Jobs for Ingham's Workers

BY GARY LYSAGHT

Workers at the soon to be closed Ingham’s processing site at Cardiff have been thrown a lifeline by rival Baiada Poultry.

Baiada has struck a deal with the Meat Workers Union to hold discussions over taking up to 80 of the workers who aren’t seeking redundancies.

Ingham’s is set to close the Cardiff site in August, citing the need to reduce expenditure as the main reason.

Baiada are set to employ 80 of its rivals staff [Source: Newcastle Herald]

Meat Workers Union Newcastle branch secretary Grant Courtney says the highly skilled workforce is being courted by many employers.

“We’ve also been contacted by JBS, which is the biggest meat processor in the world, based at Scone.  They’ve said if there’s any skilled workers that would like to apply out there, by all means,” he said.

Courtney says workers are also being asked to apply at another Baiada site at Tamworth, while other workers have asked for transfers to Ingham’s Sydney site.

“It’s one of our principle policies about employers having a moral obligation to employ locals first,” says Courtney who believes Baiada are doing just that.

“The company has always said we haven’t got enough skilled workers.  Well now we’ve got a fully skilled workforce that is available,” he said.

Around 360 full time and casual staff work at the Cardiff site and while Courtney admits he doesn’t know when they’ll move on to their new positions, he’s still overwhelmed with the outcome.

“I’m very, very happy and supportive of Baiada [for] taking the high moral ground on this issue and hopefully offering employment to the Cardiff/Novacastrian workforce,” he said.

Ingham's Employees Lose Job Security

BY GARY LYSAGHT

The Meat Workers' Union has expressed its outrage over the forced closure of the Ingham's processing plant at Cardiff, which will leave 355 workers without a job after August.


The company has said the closure is in an effort to cut costs and save money at a range of outlets across Australia since Ingham's was purchased by a large, American company 3 years ago.

Ingham's employees leave, knowing their job is no longer secure [Source: The Newcastle Herald]

The news was broken to the highly unionised workforce on Wednesday afternoon, giving workers only six weeks to find new employment.

Ingham's has confirmed they will provide redundancy payouts to workers, as well as paying for training programs for current employees to find new work.

Meat Worker's Union Branch Secretary Grant Courtney says Ingham's still isn't doing enough for their employees who don't have the skills to do much else.

"These people have worked in the industry a long time ... the company's just going to throw them on the scrap heap," he said.

He says Ingham's isn;t doing much for Cardiff workers, but it's working hard to make the processing industry in Australia better.

"They're going to invest $400 million in the processing industry, and that's a good thing for the industry, but it's not good for our member at Cardiff," he says.

"If the company's got that amount of money to splurge around to improve other processing plants across the country and can't throw money out to Cardiff; I just think it's a bad call."

Union members and executives are calling for a town hall meeting some time next week in an effort to discuss what's next for meat processing in the Hunter.

Courtney has worked with Ingham's to change their minds, but hasn't been successful.

"We've asked the company to go back to their senior figureheads and get them to reconsider their position [but] the company has said no at this stage, the decision is final, that's what it is."

Layoffs at Scone Abattoir

A downturn in the Australian livestock industry has seen 155 workers losing their jobs at a Scone abattoir.

The JBS owned facility aims to combat the downturn by shifting from double to single shift work days, resulting in the layoffs.

Most of the workers came from labour hire firms (who outsource skilled and unskilled blue-collar workers) or are on temporary work visas.

Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union Secretary, Newcastle and Upper NSW Grant Courtney said the writing for the layoffs was written on the wall.

"When there's livestock downturn or when the market corrects itself, jobs are always lost and usually the areas that are dropped first are labour hire workers."

JBS has confirmed it is still committed to the future of its Scone operations.

Mr. Courtney said the focus should remain on keeping local workers.

"It's about career opportunities for local people, who are also looking for work."

"The company needs to have a look at itself and say "well okay, who are the people we should be keeping"."

"We want to make sure that there's a career path for permanent residents into the future."

It comes after the abattoir was sold by Primo to JBS in March 2015. At the time, New England MP Barnaby Joyce confirmed then Treasurer Joe Hockey had the authority to divest JBS of the meatworks.  

Image courtesy of Emma Brown, via ABC News (LINK).
 

Hunter groups lobbying to save jobs

An alliance of business and union groups has formed to save Hunter jobs

The Australian Industry Group, Hunter Business Chamber, Hunternet and Newcastle Trades Hall Council have joined up to lobby the state government about building train carriages in Hunter rather than buying them overseas.

“Whilst we welcome the announcement and the investment decisions that are going to be made in relation to passenger rail in the future, we’re just mindful of the fact that we don’t want the state government to miss out on what could wonderful opportunity to support manufacturing capabilities in the hunter region,” said Hunternet CEO, Tony Cade.

The NSW government wants to spend $2.8billion on 65 new intercity trains.

“Certainly an off the shelf imported product may present more difficulties than a locally produced high quality product that we have the capabilities and we have the resources to be able to supply” said Mr Cade, “the advantages by having a locally manufactured product include the impacts on keeping capabilities in the region, obviously incomes paid in the regions will contribute to tax”.

The group co-signed a letter to Premier Mike Baird about the issue.

Miner crushed by 400-tonne truck

Revensworth coal mine near Singleton will remain closed today as workers receive counselling following the death of a contractor.

The contracted miner is believed to have been on a routine break when her 4-wheel drive crossed into the path of a 250-tonne dump truck on Saturday night, crushing her vehicle.
Construction, Forestry and Electrical Union spokesman, Peter Jordan, says a lot of employees have been affected by the incident.

"When there’s a fatality on a mine site it’s an enormous impact upon fellow workers and in this particular case you’ve just got to work very closely with all employees to satisfy that their health and safety as well as their state of mind is right,” said Mr Jordan, “all employees should be able to go to work return home safely… it’s unfortunate that this female mine worker hasn’t been able to do that, I think that’s enough of an alarm bell to the industry to make sure that these incidents don’t occur again.”

Several agencies, including the CFEU, will be investigating the incident. Investigations will focus on how the woman missed several signs on her way to the T-intersection.
 
Mr Jordan said inadequate signage may be to blame.

“We’ll be examining what they mean by ‘give way signs’ as opposed to ‘stop signs’, because we’re told there way only a give way sign there… there has to be a complete overhaul of an understanding as to how, why and when light vehicles should interact such heavy equipment,” he said.

Police and inspectors from NSW Trade and Investment’s Mine Safety Investigation Unit are also investigating.