Scant Basis For Sacking Miners Call Email Purge Unfair
Newcastle Herald
Saturday October 7, 2006
SACKED Bengalla mineworkers say they have lost their jobs for emails containing images no worse, in some cases, than those in most newsagency windows.
The men say they have lost their jobs for no good reason, and that other companies have laughed in disbelief when the men have shown them the material that cost them their jobs.Bengalla's managing partner Rio Tinto Coal Australia is still refusing to explain its actions in detail despite the steady stream of information coming from Bengalla.The Herald has reported that at least six Bengalla mineworkers and a growing number of people at other Rio Tinto mines have lost their jobs since the company began checking the emails and computer files of employees.The sweep was ordered after a Bengalla worker was sacked for taking a sexually explicit photograph of himself on a mobile phone camera, and storing a copy on a work computer.Rio said this week it was checking all email accounts at its seven mines, but the sacked Bengalla workers say the company "followed the branches of the email tree" from the sacked worker, but left everyone else alone."One of the reasons I joined was for equality," one sacked Bengalla worker said yesterday. "There's blokes absolutely s----ing themselves over stuff on the computers, but they [Rio Tinto] changed the goalposts after it got to 50 people being warned and they realised they'd have to sack half the workforce if they kept going like that."The sacked workers said Bengalla, like most mines, had a "three strikes" policy for drug or alcohol offences, yet they were sacked without warning over a petty breach of email policy.The workers said they saw themselves in a completely different boat to the sacked worker whose actions had triggered the controversy."They told me I had sent emails on and had stored them away when I shouldn't have," one sacked worker said."I've lost my job for a couple of pictures of girls that are showing less than the average centrefold." A Rio spokeswoman said the company would not respond to the claims of the sacked workers.
© 2006 Newcastle Herald
