THE MINRES EXPERIMENT – CIRCUS CARINA - a cautionary tale.

Let’s be honest, very few, if any of us, apply for a FIFO role to enrich our lives emotionally, we’re after the money and those of us who’ve been around for a while, understand the ludicrous baggage that often accompanies a mine site job.

“Baggage?” you ask. Imagine this:

It’s the start of a twelve and half hour night shift. It’s 5.15pm on a hot Summer’s night and there, 25 of you stand, swatting flies away, as birds swoop in trying to catch them. The Leading Hand is lecturing and it’s quite a show, we’re 30 minutes into the standard 40 minute diatribe.

He’s rocking back and forth as he thunders down upon us, sometimes taking two steps forward, then two steps back. I wonder if he’s got ADHD, I don’t think it’s nerves, although the palpable aggression may just be a front for a gentle, albeit troubled soul. He’s been making a point for the last fifteen minutes about how stupid we collectively are, how ‘they’re’ watching us and how we can and will be fired if a mistake is made, “They’re watching ya from Head Office, if youse don’t do better, you’re gone.”

The motivation factor is minus zero, yet he hasn’t finished, several hours later, a message flashes up on the computer screen in the roadtrain, “Just to confirm if you do the wrong thing, you will lose your job etc, etc.” ?You’re driving a 175 ton quad roadtrain on a public road (the Great Eastern Highway) in the middle of the night, doing your best to deliver on time and safely, while at the same time, you’re being threatened with dismissal on the screen in front of you!

Welcome to life at Mineral Resources.

Now there were early warnings, but I foolishly ignored them, which segues to Inductions.

On the surface, MinRes have done it well – glossy brochures and reassuring websites, along with a purpose – built induction building, however, as the old saying goes, ‘All that glitters is not gold.’

Parking is difficult – in short supply and the City of Stirling makes it even harder, insisting you download an app, input your life history and credit card details, then pay. Half an hour later you’re warmly greeted by genuinely lovely staff, who direct you to the right room. Refreshments and lunch are provided gratis, but as with much MinRes, chaos lurks around every polished corner.

There are several rows of eager new recruits seated at computers, a little sign above each computer bears our name and the site we’re going to. A number of attentive young women tell us how to get into each module and away we all go. All good – except that there isn’t enough data for all the computers, which constantly freeze. Within an hour, I’d become very frustrated, as I’d had to restart and redo several modules three or four times and so it goes all day. By the time I’d completed the courses, I staggered exhausted to the car and swallowed a couple of Panadol, driving away baffled, thinking they had it almost right, but hadn’t thought about the data required. However apparently I’d passed and to their credit, you get paid for inductions, excluding any time for lunch.

Two weeks later, a great mate had a far worse experience. He rang me during the morning tea break – another bloke had told fellow inductees a horrifying story. He’d previously worked for MinRes and was confronted with a dreadful family situation. I won’t go into details, suffice to say he needed to get home urgently as an immediate family member had been rushed to hospital. He told his supervisor, who shrugged and said, “No. She’s in hospital, she’s being looked after, there’s nothing you can do, so you can’t have the time off.” He said he was going, they told him he’d lose his job if he went home, he told them to get stuffed – well, the actual last word began with F. Anyhow, some months later, MinRes rang him and offered him a supervisor role at a new site for more money than he could possibly refuse. So he accepted (see my first sentence at the start of this tale). My mate said, “I don’t know about this mob, the money’s good, but …”

It got worse. They flew him to site (Koolyabobbing) the next day, where, after successfully completing several more hours of inductions, he was pulled aside and told there’d been a complaint made about him by the people at the Induction Centre at Osborne Park and it had been decided he wasn’t suitable. Stunned, he asked what the issue was. It seemed his sin was to use his phone while doing the inductions and so the decision was made that he wouldn’t follow instructions! I must add that neither my mate nor I can recall seeing anything about mobile phones at the induction centre. Old mate decided, correctly as it turns out, that he’d had a lucky escape.

Phones? That gets laughable. The reality of roadtrain driving these days, is they all have a tablet screen you need to look at and respond to while you’re driving. Often, messages flash up while you’re driving that demand to be read, but pick up a phone and it hits the fan.

With MinRes, it gets even sillier on the Carina to Parker Range run. You are reluctantly allowed to take your phones with you, as there are many areas where two way radio communication with the office is not possible, but your phone must be switched off and placed at the bottom of your workbag. At pain of being fired, it must not be touched … unless there’s an incident, a breakdown or similar, where you’re asked to send the supervisor pictures and ring through about the delay, but pull up on a mandatory 20 minute fatigue break and use your phone and you guessed it, yep, you’ve lost your job, unless you’re a supervisor, or technician etc, then use your phone as much as and wherever you need. It gets even sillier - back at the office, the labour hire drivers (most of the drivers) at the end of shift, are required to photograph their daily time sheets to send to various departments, all under signs stating ‘Mobile phones are illegal in this area.’

Haul roads: There’s an old joke that MinRes stands for Minimal Resources, a touch unkind, but the reality compared to the rhetoric can be confronting and in the case of the dirt haul road from Carina to the Great Eastern Highway, it’s not just confusing, it’s a conundrum. The haul road is actually an 80km section of the government owned Mt Walton Road which serves the intractable waste disposal facility. It is a bloody nightmare, with loaded and unloaded roadtrains weaving all over the road trying to miss potholes and bulldust. Delineators are usually missing or broken and at night, it’s ‘Good luck!’ The MinRes token maintenance is to occasionally run a grader over it, usually with no water or roller, the dust and restricted vision is almost intolerable and often dangerous. Occasionally a water truck is available and drivers have the luxury of actually being able to see where the potholes and broken surface areas are, hell, sometimes you can even see the other roadtrain coming towards you!

Prestart meetings drag on interminably with talk of safety, but woe betide any driver who brings up the haul road. They’re told to keep putting in Hazard Reports, as “Head office is looking at them, they do take notice! But meanwhile drive to conditions! Now, lets get back to what you as drivers can do.”

The pre start nonsense and constant threats of being fired eventually makes $60.00 per hour unattractive, you just don’t want to be there and that shows in staff turnover. It’s said to be around a constant 45%, but in my admittedly short six / seven week period, it appeared to be closer to 65%. The weird thing is it’s a great little camp, MinRes are rightly applauded for the food they serve – anyone who’s suffered at camps were Sodexo tries to feed people six varieties of turnips for $2.00 a day will appreciate the effort Min Res make and there are really good people there, running the camps, working as trainers etc, not to mention some bloody good drivers / people, who are constantly demeaned and treated with little if any respect.

It will probably come as no surprise that communication is a huge issue, perhaps even the root cause of overall dissatisfaction and here MinRes are not orphans in the mining industry. It’s all ‘Secret Men’s Business,’ knowing winks to the Purple Circle and an appalling lack of consultation. The rhetoric is ‘We value our people,’ the reality is they don’t, it’s a dog eat dog management on site and nor does anyone at head office appear to care.

The comedic finish to my budding career with MinRes came about due to nonsensical travel arrangements and no matter how I tried to alert, fix, or change things, nothing could prevent the ensuing chaos. In many ways, it’s the perfect illustration of how close to being excellent MinRes could be as an employer, but how wide they fall short of the mark.

On break, I received a message stating I’d be going straight on to Night Shift at the start of the two week swing. No probs, Fly In day was Thursday, I’d be in camp by 8.00am and get more than enough sleep before the 4.30pm start of shift. Then I received a message saying I’d be going up by train to Southern Cross. None of that made sense, I queried it, asking if, as I was going by train, I should get off at Koolyanobbing and asking if I was still on night shift. A message came back saying, Southern Cross was where I should get off, but no response about night or day shift. An hour or so later, the train ticket was emailed through. Nothing made any sense, but hey, I was just a truck driver.

The next day, I alighted from the Prospector at Southern Cross station, to be met by ... nobody, however there was an abandoned MinRes hard hat lying on a seat. I decided to give it an hour before I rang anyone – Parker Range was an hour away and the camp at Carina, two hours away and time passes in mining. Yes, I had water with me, the situation was not unexpected. The labour hire company rang me about half an hour in, “Hi Greg, just checking to make sure you got to Southern Cross OK and they’ve picked you up?”

“Yes and no,”

“Oh! Are you close to town?”

“No, but look don’t worry, I thought I’d give it till 1.00pm, then ring, all good.”

“OK, well ring me of you don’t get anywhere.”

By 1.00pm, I’d heard nothing and knew it was a wonderful stuff up. So before I rang anyone, I took a pic of the hard hat on the rail tracks and posted the pic on FB. Ten minutes later, a mate who works for MinRes at Parker Range rang me, “Are you at Southern Cross station?”

“Yep,”

“Why?” I told him, he started to laugh, “Don’t move, I’ll send a vehicle to get you and we’ll work out how to get you to Carina.” More laughter.

The best way to get me to the camp at Carina, was as a passenger in one of the roadtrains, so I jumped in. The driver casually mentioned there were several cases of COVID at the camp and to be careful. It would have been nice if somebody had warned me, but hey, “Toughen up Princess,” thought I to myself. I tried several times to ring the supervisor and sent messages asking about night shift, as it had become impossible. No response, nothing.

I arrived at the camp around 5.30pm and sent a message asking if I should come in for day shift the next morning, or wait for night shift. No response. The only thing to do was report for day shift at 4.30am and see what they told me. I did, the answer was, “Go back to camp, you’re on nights.”

Of course, things unravelled spectacularly when the time sheet was due. Through no fault of my own, in spite of several emails and phone calls, I’d lost a shift ($750.00) and I considered I should be paid. MinRes didn’t and demanded I change my time sheet. I refused for two or three days, then the answer came back that I wouldn’t be paid at all until I changed the time sheet. The blackmail and threats were wonderfully obvious. So I sent an email stating that under duress I had changed it, but I was over their f#@$ wittery.

I was, as you dear reader can imagine, shocked the following day, to be told I’d failed a probationary period. No, I wasn’t surprised to be told I was no longer required, I just hadn’t known about the probationary period.

Would I advise people to work for MinRes? Not if you’re going for a driving position, it’s sort of Rivet Mark 2, but I suspect working for Head Office is probably very good. It’s just that all the good will and intent appears to stop at the Osborne Park exit door, or perhaps it’s just that truck drivers are regarded as annoying swill. On the other hand, if you can put up with the aggression and negativity for $60.00 an hour, go for it. Just be aware that after three months, you’ll be pressured to become full time at $48.00 per hour. Good luck.

Greg Ross

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