More than 20 Helensburgh miners sacked by owner Peabody 18 months ago were not legitimate redundancies, according to a Fair Work Commission ruling.
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In June 2020, the 24 miners were notified they would be made forcibly redundant under a cost-cutting plan flagged by the miner in May.
The case has had a long history - Peabody objected to the unfair dismissal claim, stating the Fair Work Commission had no jurisdiction to hear the matter as they were "genuine redundancies" as per their employment agreement.
In December 2020 Commissioner Bernie Riordan rejected the Peabody objection, the miner then took the matter to the appeal court, which sent the case back to Commissioner Riordan to re-hear the matter.
At the core of the unfair dismissal claim was that Peabody retained contractors from Nexus and Mentser on site, while making directly employed workers redundant.
The sacked miners contended they should have been moved into the jobs that the company had chosen to outsource.
However Peabody claimed the decision to outsource these roles was made some time before the 2020 restructure and redundancies.
Also, the company claimed contractors "perform work which [Peabody] does not engage its directly employed workforce to perform".
In Commissioner Riordan's decision released on December 30, he found Peabody had "complied with its obligations in relation to consultation as required under the agreement."
However he was not satisfied that the hire companies "could be regarded as supplying skills exclusively of a specialist nature"
He also noted that Nexus still had employees on site carrying out roles that could be performed by a majority of the sacked miners and that Nexus had 50 or more employees engaged on a full-time basis at the mine.
"I find that the applicants' termination was not a case of genuine redundancy," the commissioner stated.
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