GlencoreXstrata announced in February that it would take over the day-to-day operation of the mine later in the year in an attempt to improve its profitability, which it claimed had been loss-making over the past 18 months.

Workers have been told previously that GlencoreXstrata will not be transferring the Thiess agreement despite its intention for operations to continue, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy union said.

The company is now trying to sign up employees to private contracts, the CFMEU claims.

In a letter to employees, GlencoreXstrata states that in addition to ongoing poor market conditions, productivity levels at Collinsville are not keeping pace with the increasing costs of production at the mine for labour, materials, goods and services and government taxes and charges.

“We believe there can be a profitable future for mining at Collinsville, but only if we make certain changes. A critical part of the long-term plan for Collinsville will be increasing labour and equipment productivity, whilst maintaining a safe workplace at the mine,” it states.

A number of specific measures are then outlined, including the need for flexible workplace agreements without restrictive work practices, either collective or individual, a company spokesman told ILN.

“We already have similar agreements in place at our other operations in Queensland. Despite numerous approaches and discussions with the state officials of the Union, we have not been able to move this matter forward,” he said.

“We believe we will be able to employ people committed to our future vision for the mine from the local communities of Collinsville, Scottsville, Bowen and Glenden.

“Employing locally will allow us to continue to support the ongoing sustainability of the local communities and standard of living with our workforce earning wages of approximately $130,000 per year. We have no set preference for any specific type of labour agreement but any agreement must be modern, flexible and without restrictions.

“Glencore has both enterprise agreements and individual common law contracts across our business in Queensland.”

CFMEU Queensland district president Stephen Smyth said the company then demanded a new greenfield agreement, which legally only applies to new projects, “not mines that have been operating for 100 years”.

“Management do not want to accept the current enterprise agreement covering its mineworkers. We have very real concerns that GlencoreXstrata is now either intimidating them into accepting individual contracts, an inferior collective EA [enterprise agreement] or a greenfield agreement with lesser pay and conditions.

“This is not the behaviour of a modern Australian employer, this is extremely combative behaviour from a company that is used to operating in countries where employees don’t have rights or a choice for bargaining representation.”