Port Waratah Coal Services agrees to a new workplace deal with five unions.
The Transport Workers Union (TWU) is celebrating a positive conclusion to its at-times bitter enterprise agreement negotiations with Port Waratah Coal Services.
Workers have made an in-principle agreement to the latest offer and are expected to sign off on the legalese in the coming weeks.
The agreement covers staff in a number of roles and unions, with the TWU and Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) the largest of five unions involved with the bargaining.
TWU Newcastle official Mick Forbes says the unions’ ability to get behind a single cause helped to force the company into a fairer deal.
“It’s been a tough three years and the reason we’ve been able to fight so hard for so long to get this agreement is because these separate unions stuck together,” he says.
The negotiations included several rounds of industrial action, but Forbes says both employer and employee can look forward to industrial peace for the life of the deal – which expires in 2017.
“Everyone who works at Port Waratah Coal Services should be proud of the united campaign we ran to force the giants of the coal industry to play fair,” he says.
Port Waratah Coal Services owns and manages the Kooragang and Carrington coal terminals in Newcastle, loading up to 109 million tonnes of export coal a year.