Pt Stanvac a lesson in working conditions under capitalism

Vanguard June 2013 p. 8
Nick G.

The former Pt Stanvac oil refinery site in Adelaide’s southern suburbs is a grim reminder of the callous indifference shown by employers towards the working class and the community.

Plans for the refinery to be run by US giant Standard Vacuum Oil were announced in 1958.  The plant became operational in 1963.

Forty years later, US parent company ExxonMobil announced that the plant would be closing.

In 2009, the State Government took 32 hectares on the northern side of the original 239 hectare site for the construction of a desalination plant, and gave Mobil a further ten years to clear and remediate the remainder.

Desalination controversy

The desal plant was controversial from the start.  Environmentalists and community activists opposed it because a blanket of saline discharge would be pumped into the relatively sluggish waters of the Gulf St. Vincent with deleterious effects on marine life including the iconic leafy sea-dragon.

Opponents of privatisation and Public Private Partnerships joined the environmentalists.  The CPA (M-L) brought out a small booklet subtitled “Community Benefit or Crony Capitalism?” which sought to expose Labor’s subservience to the monopolies through PPP deals.  It read in part:

To maximize their chances of remaining in office, bourgeois politicians strive for an “investment friendly” environment, for “partnerships” between government and business. And because there is a regular competition for office between parliamentary parties, there is also competition for the endorsement of the business community through the monopoly capitalist media… compliant governments in the major capitalist countries have looked in recent times to creating opportunities for investment in their own infrastructure projects in order to open up newer sources of profit for the big monopoly companies.

The successful consortium for the DBOM (Design, Build, Operate and Maintain) PPP was AdelaideAqua - a multi-national consortium of companies comprising McConnell Dowell Constructors, Abigroup Contractors, ACCIONA Agua and TRILITY.

 Construction commenced in March 2009 with inbuilt State Government incentive payments to the consortium for “first water” production by December 2010.

Intensifying labour

These politically-motivated incentive payments immediately became an incentive for the bosses to intensify the labour process and discipline the workforce into extra shifts, longer hours and general disregard for occupational health and safety.

Part of the intensification of the labour process manifested itself in the three separate site sub-contractors (for the plant and associated marine works, for a pumping station and transfer pipeline and for an electricity supply sub-station) working on top of each other with confusing arrangements for the positioning of the workforce.

This was one of the reasons for the site developing a poor safety record, with a string of serious injuries.

Health and safety reps had become sick and tired of raising concerns, only to be fobbed off with “We’ll look into it” and “We’ll see where it sits with the legislation” responses from management.

It’s a sad reflection of what happens under such circumstances that the morale of the site in relation to safety quickly evaporated.  The management’s couldn’t-give-a-fuck attitude infected some of the workers too.

Death on site

Then, in July 2010, there was a death on site.

CFMEU member Brett Fitsch died when a steel beam slipped from a soft sling restraint and fell on him.  The sling was being used because contractor Ferro Con had been told not to mark, chip or damage the "marine-grade paint" on the plant's walls.

Ferro Con’s director was charged in the Industrial Court with breaching workplace safety laws on the second to last day of a two year investigative period. He declared that he would plead guilty, but in the meantime had taken Ferro Con into voluntary liquidation, thus reducing his liability, and started another company, using many of the same workers, putting them under the same pressures, to do similar work. 

In the wake of Brett Fitsch’s death, more than 300 safety concerns identified by workers were investigated.  The bosses had no option but to become compliant on health and safety issues to get the whole 1300-strong workforce back on the job and prepared to work to meet the government deadline.  The project eventually came on line 12 months past the nominated time.

Refinery demolition

In late 2011, Mobil selected EDS Australasia Pty Ltd as the successful demolition contractor for the refinery. Management is the responsibility of EMA Consulting which took an anti-union stance from the start, trying to deny union recognition and right of entry.

The scope of the Demolition Project includes all the refinery process plant and piping, storage tanks, the chimney stack and other associated above-ground facilities such as the office buildings, electrical substations, warehouses, maintenance workshops and control rooms. It also includes removal of all the pipework and other oil handling facilities located on the wharf structure.

The “above-ground” stipulation has meant that buried asbestos found in the tyre tracks of demolition equipment has simply been cordoned off and left lying around because it is “not the responsibility” of this group of contractors.  Its removal – or reburial – will be in the later remediation stage of the site.

Then there was the issue of drinking water.  This arose on the day that two CFMEU organisers tried to visit the site under health and safety right of entry provisions. They had stated on their entry form that they were going to inspect the availability of drinking water throughout the site, but the project manager took one look at that and said that they were not to come on site.

By an amazing coincidence, five hours later management had closed the site and sent the 120 workers home on full pay.

Workers had been complaining of gut aches and sickness ever since the company had stopped supplying bottled drinking water and, to cut costs, had tapped into the site fire hydrant on mains water.

That water was contaminated with deadly Legionella bacteria.  The workforce was stood down for nearly three weeks on full pay while the water supply was decontaminated.  However, the asbestos remains in its little “pig-pen” enclosures.

ExxonMobil has the following weasel word statement on its website: “We are committed to conducting our business in a manner that protects the safety and health of our employees, contractors, customers, and the public. We strive for an incident-free workplace and have set a global safety and health goal of zero injuries and illnesses. We believe that our commitment to safe, secure, and incident-free operations will contribute to improved operations reliability, lower costs, and higher productivity.”

But the process of sub-contracting out sections and stages of work negates the impact of the safety pledge.

Sub-contractors have to gamble that they can complete their particular task at the cost they have quoted for it, which means that they are forced to gamble with chips that include the weather, timeliness and availability of supplies, and the compliance or otherwise of the workforce.  If there is more than one sub-contractor, they are often forced to jostle each other for access to sections of the site and to secure times when their workers can be deployed on task.

When things go wrong, the sub-contractors play the role of victim, appealing to the goodwill of “their” workers to “all pull together” against the parent company.  In turn, it blames the sub-contractors, saying they have been paid what they had quoted to get the job done.  The buck just never stops with anyone in this sort of environment.

Hence the workers have the squeeze put on, or are bribed with extra payments to work longer and faster and with less regard to safety and family life.

It has always been thus under capitalism and will remain like this so long as we refuse to take power away from the ruling class and vest power in the people under a socialist mode of production.

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News update:

(From AdelaideNow.com.au, online version of Murdoch's Adelaide Advertiser, Thursday May 30, 2013)

THE grieving mother of killed desalination plant worker Brett Fritsch has called on the Industrial Court to make an example of his employers and their unsafe practices.

Charmaine Ferraro today gave a victim impact statement in the prosecution of construction company Ferro Con.

The company has pleaded guilty to providing Mr Fritsch, 35, with an unsafe workplace on July 16, 2010.

The steel rigger was killed when a sling snapped, dropping a 14m, 1.8-tonne steel beam on to him.

Today, prosecutors told the court Ferro Con had only generic and inadequate safety plans for shifting steel around the plant.

They said the beam had to be slotted into the structure through a 7m gap on a 30-degree angle.

Charmaine Ferraro, mother of desalination plant industrial accident victim Brett Fritsch, at the Industrial Relations court after reading her victim impact statement.

Mr Fritsch was directly under the beam - a ``cardinal sin'' in rigging - because of the perceived need to keep up productivity and meet deadline pressures.


Prosecutors said the sling would have snapped regardless of the material from which it was constructed because it was not rated for a 14-tonne load.

Today, Ms Ferraro said her son's death had broken their family.
She urged the court to punish Ferro Con as much as it could.

``This court has the authority to send out a message, loud and clear, to construction companies workplace deaths and serious injuries will not be tolerated,'' she said.

Copy picture of Brett Fritsch who died while working on the Adelaide Desalination Plant at Port Stanvac, 16 Jul 2010.

``I believe now is the time to send that message out and change slack practices by lazy and greedy companies.

``Please make an example of this case, please show South Australian families that the Industrial Court cares about the value of workers' lives and not just about monetary fines.''

The court has also heard Ferro Con is in liquidation and any penalty imposed will be paid by its insurers.

The company's owner, Paolo Maione, is liable to pay Mr Fritsch's family up to $20,000 compensation.

The hearing before Industrial Magistrate Stephen Lieschke continues.