Permanent Deputies made redundant while step-ups and labour-hire fill available jobs

Sound familiar?

In recent years with the industry down-turn, we saw most mines go through some form of restructure.

All too commonly, permanent jobs were replaced with step-ups and labour-hire.

We know that many of our members working for labour-hire companies would prefer a permanent job if they could get one. They face uncertainty in hours and no real security going forward.

In the Illawarra, permanent Deputies were retrenched only to have their positions immediately filled through labour-hire.

And when your union challenged in Court Illawarra Coal’s 2013 decision not to redeploy the redundant deputies into positions at another of their operations, the law didn’t help the redundant Deputies.

Sadly our industrial relations laws offer little disincentive to employers seeking to switch their workforce from permanent to disposable.

How has it got to this?

Why don’t our industrial relations laws protect full-time permanent roles?

The rules which govern our industrial relations system are fundamentally broken when employers are allowed to get away with this behaviour.

It’s time the rules are changed.