The Fallacy of Flexibility: Workplace Reform in the Queensland Open Cut Coal Industry

BHP Coal is the world's largest coal exporting company, producing more than 40 million tonnes of Australia s most valuable single export. The 100 square kilometre site of its largest mine, Goonyella Riverside, yielded an astonishing 14.7 million tonnes of raw coal in 1993. To produce this result, over a 100 million tonnes of earth has to be shifted each year by monstrous draglines. Giant electric shovels then fill belly-dump haul trucks with the exposed coal, 220 tonnes a load. Providing the labour and expertise for this operation is the company town of Moranbah, whose residents have boasted a postcode with the third highest per capita income in the country, after Edgecliff and Toorak. Not surprisingly, the management and employment relations surrounding the mine are as complex as its production operations. The Fallacy of Flexibility traces the employment relations history of this and two other extraordinary BHP mines, Blackwater and Saraji, based on one-to-one interviews with over 1500 workers and managers. First, it describes the origins of the Queensland open-cut coal industry, and the traditions of the various trade unions and how they restricted operations. Second, it traces the crises which befell the industry in the mid-1980s and the emergence, after a concerted campaign by BHP and other coal employers, of a general agreement for more flexible work practices. Third, it assesses the problems which undermined that reform process and analyses the outcomes. The Fallacy of Flexibility provides an unparalleled study of the real obstacles to workplace change and award restructuring in one of Australia's most important export industries. While pay levels and productivity improved, opportunities were lost and longer term strategies were overshadowed. Multi-skilling, union rationalisation and booming wages linked to questionable job reclassifications are all part of a story which is essential reading for anyone interested in employment relations, productivity and workplace change. Michael Barry is a principal researcher at the Centre for Research on Employment and Work (CREW). Bradley Bowden is a labour historian and a lecturer at the School of Industrial Relations at Griffith University. Peter Brosnan is Professor of Industrial Relations at Griffith University and directed the research project upon which this study was based.

Table of Contents:
1 Introduction PART I THE INDUSTRIAL TRADITIONS Part I Introduction 2 Central Queensland and the development of open-cut coal mining 3 Underground traditions: unionism in the Queensland coal industry prior to 1960 4 New traditions: unionism in the open-cut sector 1960-92 5 Before workplace reform: working as an open-cut miner 6 Industry Restructuring Part I Conclusion PART II CASE STUDIES IN WORKPLACE CHANGE Part II Introduction 7 Workplace change at Blackwater 8 Workplace change at Goonyella-Riverside 9 Workplace change at Saraji Part II Conclusion PART III IMPLEMENTING CHANGE AT THE COAL FACE Part III Introduction 10 Overburden removal: draglines and drills and blast 11 Pre-stripping and mining 12 Engineering 13 Services and coal preparation Part III Conclusion 14 Conclusion Notes Bibliogra

About the Author :
Peter Brosnan is professor of industrial relations at Griffith University; Bradley Bowden is a lecturer in industrial relations and author of two union histories; Michael Barry is a PhD student at CREW and principal researcher for the case study.