After two weeks trapped underground, Tasmanian miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell walked out of the Beaconsfield mine early on Tuesday morning. In surprisingly good health after their ordeal — especially now that we know Todd was initially pinned down by the rock fall — the two men insisted on having a wash in a [...]
It’s fucking cold and cramped in here. Get us out. What a fantastic comment to wake up to on May Day! It was made by one of the Beaconsfield miners when the rescue team broke through to them last night. Huddled in a tiny cage, Todd Russell and Brant Webb survived the massive rockfall that [...]
The Beaconsfield rescue mission, which is now tunnelling around a rock fall, will probably not reach the two miners until Monday. If you would like to help support their families during this difficult time, the AWU has set up a hardship fund: Donations to the AWU Beaconsfield Miners’ Support Fund can be made at any [...]
It’s a terrible pity that on Workers Memorial Day we are faced with the news that the two remaining trapped miners were almost certainly killed in the earthquake. The body of one man was brought up last night, and the coroner said the machine the three men had been seen working on had been directly [...]
On Tuesday evening, an earthquake of 2.1 magnitude caused a collapse at a gold mine in Beaconsfield, Tasmania. Fourteen workers made it back to the surface, but three — Brent Webb, Todd Russell, and Larry Knight — are still trapped 925 metres below ground. Despite the length of time since the earthquake, there is still [...]
As I explained in an earlier post, WorkChoices undermines State-based health and safety legislation by preventing timely inspection of accident sites by union representatives. The delay could allow companies to tamper with evidence or come up with a cover story to avoid prosecution. While that’s bad enough by itself, the Howard Government is already planning [...]
The Government has been forced to retreat from its attempt to prosecute Queensland’s flea pit strikers. The group of 75 mining workers stopped work for two days because they refused to live “knee-deep in shit and infested with fleas and feral cats”. The company cleaned up their accommodation and they went back to work. Months [...]
While I’m on the subject of workplace safety, today we have the disturbing news that workers will be penalised for a brief stoppage to conduct a whip-around for a widow. It is a building industry tradition that workers contribute to a fund for the widows and children of killed colleagues. In the early years of [...]
One potentially very serious aspect of the Howard Government’s IR agenda is the way it surreptitiously undermines workplace safety. While WorkChoices does not entirely exclude State workplace safety laws, it “imposes additional conditions on entering premises pursuant to State or Territory Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) legislation” — by blocking union access. Union inspections are [...]
Named after a famous left-handed baseball player, the Koufax Awards are the big annual awards for the best left-wing weblogs (mainly in the United States). This year the Best Single-Issue Blog award was won by the excellent Confined Space. Its author, Jordan Barab, is an occupational health and safety activist, who continually exposes the incredible [...]
