CFMEU Mackay district vice president Steve Pierce told International Longwall News that as the industry expands, new and existing companies are not prepared to put the infrastructure in place for married workers, and were only providing single men’s camps and housing for the average worker.

“When they go out to work at these operations, our members have no ability to take their families with them, because all they can get is camp-style accommodation.

“Some of it is new but other camps have been around for years and are just patched up and because there is a shortage, people are made to live in them, with no choice.”

Pierce said it was time coal mining companies stopped treating wages employees as second-class citizens and put the same money into housing for them as they do for managers.

“In all of the mining communities, people are asking the question on why mining staff and management are being treated better than what wages employees are.”

He said staff and management are helped to get family-friendly accommodation, while wages employees are unable to get the accommodation or if they do, they have to buy it.

“Obviously the communities suffer too – mining camps aren’t counted in the census which means the town doesn’t receive extra allocations, and workers aren’t bringing their families with them to fill the schools and contribute to the towns,” Pierce said.

He said the lack of appropriate accommodation was an issue across the rapidly expanding central Queensland area, from Collinsville to the bottom of the Bowen Basin.

“None of the towns are exempt from it, all of the mining communities are in the same situation, if you go and have a look at them now, they’re basically becoming enclaves for single men’s dongas.”

Pierce said while some mining companies were starting to recognise the trend and build new houses for their wages employees, most companies were still not providing adequate living quarters.

BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) has nine coal mines in the Bowen Basin, and defended its housing strategy against the CFMEU’s scathing comments.

BMA Townships and Properties manager, Mark Fuller told ILN today that over the past three years, the entire central Queensland region has been grappling with a lack of available land, overstretched infrastructure, construction industry skills shortages and delays in Council approvals in one area.

In consultation with the Belyando, Broadsound and Duaringa Shire Councils, BMA has acquired additional land across the townships to either install accommodation directly or facilitate third party developers to construct homes to BMA specifications, Fuller said.

“We made an undertaking to provide a range of accommodation options for current and future employees to best address the changing demographics of the workforce.”

He said BMA has sought to provide accommodation based around facilitating the availability of blocks of land, family homes, apartments and single person village style units.

“Regrettably, high levels of demand have meant that some employees and their families have been placed in a ‘holding pattern’ until permanent accommodation has become available.

“We are now seeing an easing of this situation as supply catches up with demand,” he said.

ILN was unable to get comment from some of the other big central Queensland coal miners at the time of writing.