Woodside…unsafe, and ripping off workers

 (h/t Pamela Knox)

The following is an extract of an email sent

to the MUA from one of our member’s on

Woodside’s Scott Reef Project. The principal

contractors were Geokinetics and Mermaid

Marine – the same two contractors facing

lawsuits after recent fatalities on a Project in

the Gulf of Mexico.

“Unsafe working conditions

“We worked until the wind was over 24knots

or the swell was 1.5 metres inside the reef,

which is no good for a boat only 7metres

long and not very stable. On the days when

the wind was around 30knots and the skippers

tried to call off production we would

be asked several

times over if we

were certain that

the weather was

too poor to work

in, placing unreasonable pressure on the

skippers and forcing many to keep working

in weather they shouldn’t be. This was not

even reviewed after the incident in the gulf of

Mexico involving the same company.

Green deckhands

Many of the deckhands brought out by

Geokinetics didn’t have any training or

experience on water. Some hadn’t even been

out in a dinghy before they

got to Scott Reef. As far as

I’m concerned, minimum

requirements for that job

should have involved deckhands

having spent some

time working on water,

STCW95 and Elements of

Shipboard Safety. The job

was 400km off shore.

Inexperienced

management

Not only were a lot of the

deckhands inexperienced

but even the management

knew very little about the

ocean and how dangerous

it can be to work on.

It was their job to give us

directions and many of their

managers didn’t have a clue

about what they were doing

or understood their obligations

to provide us with a

safe place of work.

Unsafe vessels

On some of the boats, the

ropes and winching gear for

the guns were sub-standard

and very dangerous. There

were a number of incidents

where people nearly got

seriously injured. Very few

of these were reported.

Foreign labour

Geokinetics employed people

from Indonesia, Brazil,

Bangladesh and the UK, all

of whom were employed on

business visas (651 visas).

Geokinetics were only paying Australian

Skippers $372 a day (with no leave day)

and the Aussie deckhands were on $352 a

day (with no leave days). The workers from

Bangladesh and Indonesia were getting paid

just $75 per day. The Aussies were getting

ripped off, but were well paid in comparison

with the foreign workers.’’

This is what you get on a Woodside Job –

Their Safety Philosophy – straight from their

website is:

“We believe that the health and

safety of our people comes

first in all our

decisions and actions. Our health and safety

aspiration is ‘no-one gets hurt, no incidents’

and we seek to be recognised by our people

and peers as an industry leader in the management

of health and safety. This includes

ensuring the integrity of our assets throughout

their lifecycle so that they operate without

jeopardising our people’s health and safety

and our asset’s value.”

The MUA membership will judge Woodside

on their actions – not their words.

Doug Heat

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