MINING JIBBER JABBER

AND so it has happened. The mining industry is getting vaccinated.

Western Australia, not surprisingly, given its iron ore is worth in the vicinity of $104bn a year, was first cab off the rank. It has mandated for all mining industry personnel to be vaccinated at least once by December 1 and twice by

January 1, 2022.

If you’re not vaxxed to the max by January, you don’t get on site. Queensland’s coal industry is worth $36bn to the Queensland economy and mining in general pumps $40bn into the state’s economy a year.

We aren’t going down the mandatory vax track just yet. I asked the Queensland Resources Council what the policy was in terms of vaccinations. The QRC advised that some members were “incentivising employees to get vaccinated”. The QRC strongly encouraged vaccinations “across the sector”. The Big Australian – BHP – has already announced that being fully vaccinated against Covid-19 will be a prerequisite to getting on to its national sites and into offices by the end of January 2022.

Not all companies are following this lead – at least not yet, anyway. Bravus (Adani) is not moving towards mandatory vaccination.

A Bravus spokeswoman said the company supported the state and federal governments’ vaccination efforts and was encouraging its workforce to get vaccinated.

The CFMEU is not exactly in party mode following BHP’S mandatory vaccination call.

The union’s Central Queensland representative Stephen Smyth said legal advice had been sought and that talks were scheduled with the Big Aussie this week.

“We don’t support mandatory vaccination by the employer,” he said.

He said other large mining companies were happy with the health detection systems they had already put in place.

Blokes I know in the mining industry say there is still a fair bit of resistance among some staff when it comes to getting the jab. You’d have to think it inevitable though that most companies will be hanging out the No Jab, No Job shingle before too long.