Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union district vice-president Bob Timbs told ILN that crews moved the longwall 55m to get past a problem area about two weeks ago.

“We won’t jeopardize our longwall,” Timbs said.

But since this time the union has started a more severe industrial campaign, which included a 24-hour strike on Friday.

“Over the last couple of weeks we have slowly ramped up our industrial action to a point now we’re only working two hours out of an eight-hour shift,” Timbs said.

The union is not planning to change these rolling stoppages any time soon.

“We’ve got to lodge 72 hours [to Fair Work Australia] prior to taking industrial action so we’ll just keep on lodging them indefinitely until there is some resolution,” Timbs said.

The national industrial relations tribunal held hearings roughly six weeks ago, with Xstrata seeking to terminate the expired enterprise agreement at the mine.

But the FWA commissioner handling the case is yet to make a decision, with Timbs unsure when it is going to happen.

Xstrata subsidiary Tahmoor Coal stated five areas the company would not agree to in a new enterprise agreement back in March.

These included:

• Minimum manning requirements
• Conditions on the use of contractors
• Seniority of shift allocation and retrenchment and rehiring
• Restrictions on hours of work
• Requirements to maintain the status quo when matters are in dispute

On the negotiations, Timbs said Xstrata basically offered the industry award with a pay increase and the remuneration package was well short of the rest of the southern districts longwall mines.