Griffin Coal Workers 43% Pay Cut

[Spudz27]

I only have one thing to say. As someone who earns under 40k, when I see miners (who I acknowledge work long shifts) get 2/1 or as my mums partner 1/1 rotations, get over 100k per year complain about being offered less pay. I have no sympathy at all, try working 9-5 for 1/4 what your paid, then you might appreciate the money you get and acknowledge that your paid well and stop complaining. So you can only fly to bali 3 times instead of 6, you have to hold off on modifying your car or upgrading to a new one again.

I manage a business ffs and I get **** all for doing so, but I don't complain, I do my job, get my pay and look after the family (yes my partner also works).

If it is that bad, come and do my job at my pay for a month and I will do yours, then I gurantee you will have an understanding of just how good you have it.

[Ben73]

Originally Posted by geckoGT

And you pay those prices because the area is full of miners earning ridiculous pay that they are just not worth.

Example. I lived in Karratha in WA in 2002 working in the Army as a advanced medic and often on patrol throughout the Pilbara region (it is a surveillance unit). During patrols I was working in very tough conditions in up to 50 degree heat with limited water supply. I did all this for an income of <$60K, I had all the skills and more of an industrial paramedic. The medics from the iron ore mines were earning near on $100k more than me for doing less clinical work, with less training and sitting in an air-conditioned office most of the day. Why, apparently their job was dangerous, spent time away from their family and they lived in a remote area. I can guarantee the rate of injury/death in the army far exceeds the mining industry, I operated in far more remote areas and I spent far more time away from my family.

Lots of people should be paid more than they get. Many of these people are paid by the government. Police, Paramedics, Fire brigade, nurses, teachers, etc.
Problem is these essential services don't earn a profit. Well not as much as the costs anyway.
Working in a mine is like working in any private business. They entire point of the company is to sell a product for a profit. If those profits are high, they have the money to pay employees a good wage.

I get paid double the amount my missus does, but she works harder than I do. I work for a private company while she works an essential service for the government. I guess the government could increase the wages of all their employees by increasing taxes, but no one would want more taxes.

Originally Posted by Spudz27

I only have one thing to say. As someone who earns under 40k, when I see miners (who I acknowledge work long shifts) get 2/1 or as my mums partner 1/1 rotations, g

1/1 sounds good in theory, but terrible in practice. I would want a few days off in a row. One on, one off would be a nightmare. You could never go away for the weekend because you would never get one.

[geckoGT]

Originally Posted by Ben73

Lots of people should be paid more than they get. Many of these people are paid by the government. Police, Paramedics, Fire brigade, nurses, teachers, etc.
Problem is these essential services don't earn a profit. Well not as much as the costs anyway.
Working in a mine is like working in any private business. They entire point of the company is to sell a product for a profit. If those profits are high, they have the money to pay employees a good wage.

I get paid double the amount my missus does, but she works harder than I do. I work for a private company while she works an essential service for the government. I guess the government could increase the wages of all their employees by increasing taxes, but no one would want more taxes.



1/1 sounds good in theory, but terrible in practice. I would want a few days off in a row. One on, one off would be a nightmare. You could never go away for the weekend because you would never get one.

Nice theory except that extra money those workers get paid above what they are actually worth does not come from the company, it comes from the consumer in increases in the cost of living.

Also I think he was referring to week on/week off not day on/day off.

[Ben73]

Originally Posted by geckoGT

Nice theory except that extra money those workers get paid above what they are actually worth does not come from the company, it comes from the consumer in increases in the cost of living.

Also I think he was referring to week on/week off not day on/day off.

Week on week off makes more sense actually. I always have seen people refer to it as 7 on, 7 off.

A lot of our coal is exported, so guess that means we are also increasing the cost of living in foreign countries.

[geckoGT]

Originally Posted by Ben73

Week on week off makes more sense actually. I always have seen people refer to it as 7 on, 7 off.

A lot of our coal is exported, so guess that means we are also increasing the cost of living in foreign countries.

Which bounces back as an increase in the cost of the product they constructed using the power generated by that coal. Any increase in the wages of staff increases the cost of production, this increases the cost of the product which is paid for by the consumer.

[Spudz27]

Originally Posted by Ben73

.



1/1 sounds good in theory, but terrible in practice. I would want a few days off in a row. One on, one off would be a nightmare. You could never go away for the weekend because you would never get one.

Sorry meant 1 week on 1 off.

[TheSneakiness]

Originally Posted by b0son

No, the average is the average. A better measure is the median, because that gives an idea of where the majority lie, unlike the average, which is skewed by the handful of people making gazillions. And yes, the median is well below the average.

Poor choice of words on my behalf but agreed.

[mcflux]

Originally Posted by geckoGT

What is the point of looking at individual numbers of deaths between the two sectors? That gives a false impression of the reality, risk is a result of the number of deaths compared to the size of the workforce, the higher the ratio the higher the risk. Therefore the ratio means much more than the raw death numbers.

Risk yes, but deaths are deaths. 37 deaths in mining and 6 deaths in defence are 43 deaths too many.

Agreed I have no doubt it does, in fact I know it does as I have friends and relatives in the mining industry. However what is the rate in comparison to defence that would justify increased remuneration to the mining industry?

There's $$$ in the mining industry & rightly or wrongly so our economy is heavily reliant on mining. Also one industry is a business whilst the other is a service (or even "insurance" if I could use such a term, not meaning any disrespect to our defence personnel, and ignoring the non-combatant activities defence do for us and internationally).

They have made large efforts to achieve that but in the end for many roles in the defence force it is impossible to do. Lets look at my military career. I was trained as an infantry rifleman, a driver and crew commander of an armoured personnel carrier and also a anti armour operator (tank killer). None of those jobs have any civilian counterpart. As an advanced medic yes there are some crossovers to paramedic but not a direct qualification. Good news on that front is that work has been done in this area and it is a bit easier for medics leaving the army now to work as a paramedic, they still have to do 2 years of a degree though.

Agreed, no direct comparisons to civilian equivalent occupations.

I only mentioned employment risks because from what I have seen every time a union is beating the drum pushing for more pay and better conditions in the mining sector this has been a considerable item of their agenda. Meanwhile many other workers in different sectors carried on taking bigger losses with no increase in pay or conditions to compensate for those risks. I am not saying it is the primary factor but it does get involved. Just like I also mentioned social factors, responsibility and education which on the surface seems to have been missed.
I understand what you're saying about instability and the like, and yes when such a situation arises like that at Griffin Coal it doesn't appear to be sustainable at face value for the workers to maintain their current pay (and possibly conditions).

Mining's an area with huge money to be had, but is still an industry heavily reliant on blue collar workers rather than computers, with high risk for said workers. I've come from a white collar industry with no union presence, and the only difference between my former and current industries is the treatment of the workers. The guys at the top still enjoy their profits and golden handshakes, but at least in my current industry - thanks to ongoing union campaigning - the workers aren't continuously squeezed harder & harder.

Sometimes the workers have to take some responsibility to share some of the pain in a market downturn, something they rarely do and particularly not without being told they have to. A smaller scale example of this is my parents farm. They own a rather large wheat farm in WA and employ both seasonal and also full-time workers. During the mining boom they found themselves having to pay more for workers to attract good employees because workers with the skills they were after were earning much more money in the mining sector. At the same time wheat prices were often not good or production was not good. Added to that the cost of production in materials, fuel, machinery etc was increasing. The result was they took a large personal financial hit with it getting to the point that they were extremely stressed about how they were going to pay wages. Those stresses arguably contributed largely to my mother developing high blood pressure, which lead to the 3 aneurysms in her brain which ultimately lead to her bleed on the brain last year which could have cost her life. Apart from stress she is a very clean living person with good diet and non smoker so stress was an enormous factor. At a time when company income was not good they were having to pay more for workers than they had ever been worth before. None of the workers offered to take a reduction in pay in order to keep the farm alive nor would virtually anyone reading expect they should. My parents got through it at a large personal loss and the farm has survived. The amusing thing is during times of good income for my parents they have bought real estate which gives the appearance they are well off and can afford to pay their workers more. What people do not realise is that real estate is what they sold off to keep the farm alive and keep those same workers employed when income was not so good.

I use that example as a large corporation is largely in the same situation but on a much larger scale.

That sucks about your mother's health problems - I hope they are largely alleviated now. I have to ask though (for the section bolded), was this put forth to the workers? The flipside to this is those workers may also be struggling on what they were earning - yes they're getting paid more but due to the economy in the west their accommodation, food, fuel, etc all skyrocketed as well.

But I see your issue here. Your parents went through hard times financially whilst the workers went through good times from an employment perspective.

A company is not a inanimate object with a large bucket of gold, it is actually a group of people with their own financial security invested in it. That is not to say I think company executives have nothing to answer for or that greed in the upper levels of company management is not an issue, I just don't believe it is the only issue.

Agreed, but when it's a large company, the average workers' pay & (existing) conditions have far less of an impact than most other factors.

I found it rather interesting that so many here have made reference to share holders and from comments made they appear so evil. I am a share holder in Rio Tinto and BHP, with my money that I worked hard for and it is my future financial security. Shareholders are not big player mining tycoons, they are also the little people trying to give themselves a stable financial future after working very hard for what they have. If one of the companies I owned shares in was in a market downturn producing less profit (decreased dividends) and did not mange that with reduction in production costs I would want to know why. If they maintained staffing levels and pay rates that were not supported by the market conditions, that would have to be one of many elements that would cause me to lose faith in the company in terms of my financial stability. That may lead myself and other shareholders to want to pull our money out of the company and take it elsewhere. Result of that could ultimately mean collapse of the company, lots of people lose money including the little people and the workers are out of a job.

That kind of investor behaviour would further amplify the volatility of the market and therefore the volatility of the employment of the workers - who are the ones ultimately making the money. I do get it that the basics to investing is to actually make money (or to invest in certain areas in a philanthropic manner) but it all investors saw a market slump & they all pull out to save their bit, the workers then lose out completely.

So the shareholders, particularly the little guys, aren't evil as such but they can be destructive through butterfly-effect actions. I reserve most of my stink-eye for the execs at the top of the chain who gamble with a company (or are greedy) rather than the share-holders.