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Happy Workers Are Good Workers! In my last article I mentioned the slow start to the “Hilton” project in Surfers Paradise. Well it’s looking like a job again now and not a ghost town, with Brookfield Multiplex erecting their third tower crane on site last week. This will be a very interesting project. Like Circle on Cavil they are building up at the same time they will be mining down and building the basements. The Baulderstone Robina hospital expansion project is all go. Trade unionist Wayne Bell (Belly) has been elected as the BLF delo for the site and is excited to be representing workers on the coast. The demo part is done and construction is well under way. Also on the job are Ozfix steelies, Oneform formworkers and East Coast concreters, all good subbies with current union agreements (EBAs).
On the Grocon ‘Oracle’ project there has been a few teething problems with the co-ordination of the jump form and maintaining clear safe access for the workers to the deck. Not only access to the deck but more importantly; a safe emergency access way.
Luckily Grocon have employed some good foreman as one supported my call to remove workers from the area and tried to find a solution to the safety issues. I followed up the very next morning only to find the same safety issues occurring. I was then challenged by another one of Grocon’s management over a ladder being a safe emergency access! Comrades we all know it isn’t. Can you imagine 30 odd workers bailing down a ladder safely? I don’t think so. It became very obvious to me that productivity was a whole lot more important than the safety of the workers to this empty. It took some time and a lot of patience but the result I was after - which was no more than a safe work area for the worker with safe emergency access - was achieved. It doesn’t end there. In the lobby there is an exposed edge to a 12 floor drop. Instead of a tube and fit scaffold hand rail, two peri props wound out were all there was between safety and a fall. The view from this death trap looked directly at the accident site where we lost two lives a year ago a falls from heights.
On a lighter note, Grocon’s EBA has been finalised and voted up. I would like to congratulate all the workers from the Soul and the Oracle projects for sticking together through the negotiation process. The only way forward has never changed and never will. We win battles as a collective, never alone. Builders who suffered through the years of Work- choices have realised that non- union subbies come with baggage - and even though they come with cheaper prices they end up costing more - usually at the expense of the worker. The standard of work, the safety and morale on the job is far better with union subbies. It’s amazing how much happier the worker is when they’re getting paid the right money with all their entitlements up to date. Well-paid workers are happy workers and happy workers are good workers.
If you don’t fight, you lose!
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