McKell Institute report exposes continued 30 per cent wage gap between labour-hire and direct coalmine employment

The union's national president, Tony Maher, said yesterday that with export coal earnings forecast to top $100 billion this year, coal companies were still "aggressively" using casual employment to cut wages.

"The industry is booming and in many areas mine operators are struggling to find enough workers to dig coal fast enough to capitalise on the phenomenal prices," Mr Maher said.

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"It simply cannot be argued that coal companies can't afford to provide well-paid secure, permanent jobs to coal mineworkers."

Mr Maher was commenting on an updated version of a 2020 report commissioned from the McKell Institute, with new statistics to show the growing impact of labour hire on the coal industry.

The future of the coal industry has become a major topic of the federal election campaign, and the "same job, same pay" campaign of Labor and the union movement was a prominent topic at yesterday's May Day rallies, including a big rollout in Newcastle, where the march went along the foreshore from Newcastle Museum to Nobbys.

The McKell Institute report uses Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) workforce figures, earnings of mineworkers at the Mount Arthur and Bulga open-cut mines and an estimated casual workforce rate of 30 per cent to 40 per cent to show a direct wage impact in Hunter and Paterson of between $93 million and $168 million a year, and $130 million to $236 million when indirect impacts are included.

Coal Services employment numbers, however, indicate an even bigger impact.

The latest monthly employment report from the industry regulator, Coal Services, shows 8678 contractors and 13,821 direct employees in NSW coalmines, a ratio of 38.5 per cent contractors. Excluding southern district mines exporting through Port Kembla, the figures are 7112 contractors and 12,152 direct employees, a contractor ratio of 36 per cent.

The McKell report uses direct wages of $146,694 and contractor earnings of $110,729 (a difference of $35,965 or 32.5 per cent) for Mount Arthur and $151,547 and $115,293 ($36,254 or 31.4 per cent less) for Bulga.

These figures give a wage difference of more than $250 million, confirmation of the McKell report's description of its wage loss estimates as "conservative".

At the May Day rally yesterday, the mining union's northern district president, Robin Williams, said wealthy corporations were stripping a third or more out of wages while not having to pay holiday pay, sick leave or production bonus.

"Secure jobs have been an important part of the social compact between mining companies and host communities," Mr Williams said.

"This report shows mining companies have washed their hands of this responsibility and it's the community that is being ripped off.

"It's a disgrace. If your employer says you are a casual, regardless of your roster type, your roster arrangement, with fixed, ongoing, regular and systematic work. If your employer says you're a casual and that's in your contract of employment, then forever and a day you're a casual."

Mr Williams was referring to last August's WorkPac v Rossato decision, which "an established shift structure fixed long in advance" did not override a "written agreement" that described the worker as a casual.

"In my view the only way we can fix this is a change of government," Mr Williams said. "Because the current government has put in place laws that make it easy for employers to continue doing what they're doing, and we need those laws changed."

Mr Maher takes up the theme in a foreward to the McKell report.

Our union has worked tirelessly through the courts to expose and end the casual labour hire rort undermining wages and conditions in our industry," Mr Maher said.

"However, when we had big court wins that would have delivered some justice to labour hire workers, the Morrison government simply overturned them - bowing to the intense lobbying of big mining and labour hire companies."

Mr Maher said the union wanted "same job same pay" laws requiring labour-hire earnings to match the terms of site enterprise agreements.

He said the union did not object to labour hire meeting "genuine peaks and troughs in production; but labour hire should not be used to undercut enterprise bargaining, drive down pay and rob regions of the economic activity they deserve as host communities".

He said "the current super-profits" would not last forever, which was "even more reason for coal companies to be held to account for providing good, secure jobs now".

Matt Howard, a union lodge secretary at a big Hunter open-cut, told the Newcastle Herald at the rally that labour-hire workers at his mine had been unable to get home loans because of the lack of job security.

"We don't have division (between permanents and labour-hire) at our site, it's pretty good in that way," Mr Howard said. "We understand they're in the position they're in because the employers have put them there."

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