The 235-240 strong workforce took part in a 40-hour strike from Thursday, and discussed further industrial action in a meeting on Saturday.

Xstrata has offered the workers the chance to rollover the existing agreement along with a pay rise of 11c per hour, according to Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union district president Andy Honeysett.

Honeysett told ILN there would be a meeting this Friday to tidy up a rollover of the old enterprise agreement with a pay increase for “the blokes that are willing to look at that”

But he said there were a few issues to tidy up in the new enterprise agreement, in areas relating to arbitration and termination of the agreement.

Starting Sunday, the Ulan workers will take two-hour rolling stoppages at the end of each shift, with the last one on Tuesday.

Honeysett said these stoppages were to report back to the workers on what transpired from the meeting this Friday.

He added the negotiations were making more headway than over at Tahmoor.

An Xstrata spokesperson said industrial action is not in the long-term interests of the employees or the Ulan operation, and negotiations have been constructive.

“We believe the proposed new enterprise agreement for the Ulan operation is generous and delivers considerable benefits to employees that are over and above current arrangements,” he said.

“We gave employees an opportunity to hold a four-hour paid meeting a fortnight ago which would have avoided interrupting the mine’s operation over the weekend.

“We were disappointed that offer was declined and the decision was made to take further industrial action.”

Ulan redundancy case

Fair Work Australia recently upheld an appeal by Xstrata on a late January decision by the workplace tribunal to rule that 10 Ulan mine workers axed in August were not genuine redundancies under the Fair Work Act.

Honeysett told ILN the case was going back to the original Commissioner to talk about the redeployment of the 10 men, with redeployment being a new area of law.

He said the union will make the case that the workers who were made redundant could have been offered positions at Xstrata’s Ravensworth operation.

On the successful appeal, he said a case of genuine redundancy was ruled out because men hired to replace those made redundant had additional skills.

Outside of the case, he said Ulan underground had lost 10-12 tradesmen in the past couple of months as they did not want “to play mine worker”, although this has not been confirmed by Xstrata.

The Swiss mining major slashed 122 jobs at Ulan and 158 from its Tahmoor operation, also in NSW, last year.

With enterprise agreements overdue for both mines, the CFMEU has been bargaining for conditions relating to security of employment for many months.

Industrial action at Tahmoor started back in October and has involved limiting the output of the wash plant to no more than 200 tonnes per hour, directly hitting the operation’s bottom line.

The Tahmoor dispute was referred to Fair Work Australia for resolution, with the first hearing in late March.