Anglo Coal’s Dawson mine workers began the stop-work meetings on Friday with 150 workers attending. CFMEU Queensland vice-president Stuart Vaccaneo said the four-hour information sessions would continue this week to ensure all workers on all rosters were given the opportunity to hear where the CFMEU sees the pitfalls of the EBA and the additional clauses it was pushing for.

While negotiations with mine management are ongoing, a meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday. Vaccaneo said the union had been negotiating with Anglo since October 2006, two months before worker contracts expired. He said the union was considering 12-hour and 24-hour stoppages at the mine.

For Vaccaneo, the Dawson dispute extends beyond mine borders and to the industry’s workers as a whole.

“The fundamental issue is lots of coal companies are seeking for certain provisions to get taken out of agreements. One of the most troubling for me is health assessments,” he said.

“There are provisions contained under the Coal Mining Act in Queensland about how and why the regular five-year medicals are conducted. Under the fitness for duty provision there is the opportunity for the companies to sit down and do a proper risk assessment and come up with additional tests – but it has to be agreed by the majority of the workforce.

“What companies are seeking to do through an industrial agreement is have people circumvent the requirements of the relevant Coal Mining Act and regulations.

“The WorkChoices legislation specifically excludes you putting anything in a workplace agreement that is against workplace health and safety provisions, so I am very loathe to put something in an industrial agreement that could in fact be illegal.

“I am certainly not going to be party to signing peoples’ rights under workplace health and safety laws away in an industrial agreement.”

Vaccaneo said the main clauses under contention on the Dawson EBA were rosters, medical, lack of disciplinary procedures, application of the document, and retrenchment provisions.

CFMEU would like to see additional clauses included in the EBA covering disciplinary procedures and an appraisal system.

“Under the current document, a lot of the provisions that used to be in the agreement will just become company policies, which the company can vary with no input from the workforce,” Vaccaneo said.

“Areas like the disciplinary procedure need to be clear cut so everyone knows what it is.”