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Workers injured in BHP explosion.
PERTH - Three workers are fighting for life in the Royal Perth Hospital after suffering horrific burns in a gas explosion at BHP Billiton's Boodarie hot briquette iron plant at Port Hedland on May 19. While a fourth man is in a stable condition, his workmates are listed as critical and one is not expected to live.
Forcing the closure of the Boodarie site, this latest accident comes three weeks after the death of maintenance worker Cory Bentley at BHP's iron ore processing operations at Nelson Point.
Unions have expressed anger over the risk to worker safety at BHP's Port Hedland operations. Australian Manufacturing Worker's Union state secretary Jock Ferguson has called for an independent safety audit of the company's iron ore division.
Socialist Alliance Senate candidate Ian Jamieson told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly that imposing prison sentences on employers responsible for the death of workers deaths would rapidly improve safety standards at companies like BHP. "Multinational companies like BHP only laugh at fines and use their corporate lawyers to get off the hook. Employers must be held responsible for negligence over worker safety and be punished accordingly. Safety at work is a basic right."
Russell Pickering
Nurses picket WA parliament
PERTH - More than 100 nurses from hospitals across Western Australia's south-west went on strike on May 18 and travelled to Perth to demonstrate outside state parliament.
The nurses called on the state ALP government to implement caps on workloads, in line with an industrial relations commission order that expired in February this year. The order limited nurse-patient ratios to one to five. Actual workloads are far higher. Nurses told the May 19 West Australian that in some regional hospitals, staffing levels are so low that ratios are as high as one to ten and in one hospital one to twenty.
Nurses entered parliament to clap and chant during health minster Jim McGinty's appearance before an estimates committee hearing. The Australian Nurses Federation has warned the government that it faces escalating industrial action if it does not move to limit workloads that put staff and patients' safety at risk.
Chris Latham
Restaurant targeted in pay dispute
SYDNEY - The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has maintained a daily vigil outside a Newtown restaurant over a pay dispute at a site being developed by the restaurant's owner, James Nazmi.
The Indonesian seafood restaurant Safari, on King Street, was forced to close its doors during the week as Nazmi attempted to avoid the protest.
Nazmi was building a new restaurant and multi-storey hotel in the city. When the contracted builder went bust and fled to Korea, owing sub-contractors about $1.5 million, the site was closed. Dozens of workers employed by the sub-contractors have not been paid.
The CFMEU's policy is that if a builder goes bust, the developer of the site - as the party contracting the builder - must pay the debts owed to the workforce. Nazmi is rumoured to have fled to Indonesia to wait for the storm to blow over.
Other unions have shown their solidarity with the campaign and on May 18, 40 members of the Australian manufacturing Workers Union joined the protest.
Liam Mitchell
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, May 26, 2004.
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