The Western Mine Workers’ Alliance has slammed as ill-conceived and inadequate an Isolation Care Package being offered to Rio Tinto’s Pilbara workers who are forced to isolate due to COVID restrictions.
Rio Tinto and its catering company Sodexo have prepared the care packs, which consist of a box containing a kettle, tea, coffee, milk, packet noodles and detergent, as well as an “in-room strength program”, for workers who test positive to COVID and must isolate for seven days.
AWU WA Branch Secretary Brad Gandy said the care packages were an absolute joke.
“Only recently Rio Tinto admitted it had a huge, long-standing problem with the appalling workplace culture at its WA mining operations and had to do better,” Mr Gandy says.
“Now this multi-billion-dollar corporation comes out with this cheap and manifestly inadequate effort. Is this really what Rio thinks ‘better’ looks like?
“Is this what a company that says it is serious about trying to change its culture thinks is suitable for Pilbara workers ISOing in the shoeboxes the company calls rooms?”
Greg Busson, Mining and Energy Union WA secretary, said: “The WMWA has still to receive a response to an earlier letter to Rio Tinto, sent on behalf of its Pilbara members, voicing serious concerns for their health and wellbeing while they are on its sites, particularly the management of positive cases and close contacts.”
The letter asked a series of questions included asking what steps Rio was taking to enable close-contact isolating employees to safely repatriate to isolate at home, and to enable COVID-19 positive employees to safely repatriate to isolate and recover at home?
“Unlike in the eastern states the WA resource sector has had plenty of time to properly plan for this situation,” Mr Busson said.
“Rio’s example shows we clearly can’t just leave this to the companies to manage. The government needs to get all the industry stakeholders together and find sensible solutions that work for the mining companies and their employees.”
Said Mr Gandy: “Mining workers and their families want to know that their employer are actually looking after them, but right now they feel like they are being treated like mushrooms when it comes to their own health and safety.”
“The lack of support and the company’s silence so far on our concerns for workers caught up in the COVID pandemic is a good reflection of how the new Rio is just the same as the old Rio. So much for culture change.”
The Western Mine Workers’ Alliance (WMWA) is a partnership between the Mining and Energy Union and the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU).