Despite ongoing company lockouts and strikes, Port Kembla Coal Terminal’s operations manager is “hopeful” of a solution before a deadline at the end of March.
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On Friday – before coal terminal workers went on strike for four days and were later locked out by the company – operations manager Kurt Baumgart wrote to the employees to outline its case.
At the heart of the dispute is a union concern the terminal wants to remove an employment security clause so as to allow them to sack workers and replace them with contract labour.
PKCT representatives have said this is not their intention.
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Mr Baumgart’s letter was designed to reach workers, who had not been inside the terminal since January 19.
The letter includes the updated employment security clause, which has been rejected by union officials.
The revised clause promises in the event of redundancies, the terminal would “investigate available avenues to avoid forced redundancies” including reducing the number of contractors – but only if the employee and contractor are doing the same work.
This would replace a clause stopping the company from making an employee redundant in order to replace them with a contractor.
“I firmly believe the strongest form of employment security,” Mr Baumgart wrote, “is having a productive, engaged and efficient workforce that is flexible and able to adapt to the market conditions.”
The extensive industrial action from both sides comes as the March 29 deadline draws near to sign off on a new enterprise agreement.
“I remain hopeful that with productive bargaining we can reach agreement on outstanding matters and put the proposed EA to a vote before … 29 March 2019,” Mr Baumgart wrote.