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Issue No. 148 | 16 August 2002 |
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Peak Performance
Interview: Labor Law Unions: Critical Conditions Bad Boss: Shifting The Load History: Peeking Out Safety: Flying High Corporate: Salaries High, Performance Low International: War on the US Wharves Review: And the Signs Said... Poetry: Tony Don't Preach Satire: Latham Dumps Rodney Rude as Speech Writer
Politics The Soapbox The Locker Room Bosswatch Human Rights
 Miranda's Not Fair on OutworkersAnother Capitalist Party?Justice For All?Kill the Photos!Right Wing Lackies
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Unions Critical Conditions
********* Thirty eight-year-old Chris Gillespie is a construction industry veteran. He feels more like a football being mauled over by a heavyweight scrum of lawyers, doctors and shonky employers. Storm Gloria, at 11 months, is a veteran of emergency helicopter rides and life-saving surgery. She is also, her father says, the principal reason he hasn't toured Sydney construction sites looking to take the law into his own hands. The pair have a bond but, at 10kg, she has just hit the maximum weight doctors say her father can lift. It's been that way since Gillespie wrecked his back, bulging two discs, dessicating another and getting a "convex" spine while working for employers who didn't pay workers comp levies or top-up insurance. The upshot has been no compo and no treatment as steel fixing companies deny liability; insurance companies shove him from pillar to post and compensation lawyers PK Simpson - motto: Homer doesn't work here but PK does - leave him reaching for another Duff. He doesn't drive any more because the car's out of rego. Basically, he's living off his girlfriend, Storm's mother, has been since he had to give up the lease on his own flat a year ago. "I'm fucked up," he admits. "I went through a divorce a few years back but this is worse. My moods are all over the place, it's a constant battle to stay on an even keel. "Honestly, if it wasn't for my daughter I don't know what would happen. "It's just so depressing to go from being a working man to somebody who sponges off his girlfriend." And a working man he certainly was. After cutting his teeth as a builder's labourer in Sydney on projects such as the Commonwealth Bank in Martin Place, and a stint with the BWIU, he headed for Queensland. He's been a formworker, concreter, paver, labourer, patcher and ganger, driven forklifts and all-terrain vehicles on construction sites across the northern state. Most memorably, he lasted nearly six months reclaiming mangroves for an extension to the Cairns International Airport runway. "We were knee-deep in mud and mangroves being bitten by fire ants, leeches and bugs," he recalls. "Me and another bloke who had been there a while used to take bets on how long newcomers would last, sometimes it was 20 minutes, sometimes until smoko, if they were real fit we would give them a couple of days. "We were usually on the money." He worked a few years for the Engine Drivers Union, organising in south west Queensland. Cunamulla has become famous/infamous since his day. "It was a good town, mate," he says. "When it got a bit quiet there you could always drive 80km down the highway for a beer at the Eulo Queen." Gillespie would travel the west with his old cattle dog for company. One of his proudest achievements was selling the benefits of union membership to a whole group of wheat farmers, moonlighting as council workers, in the heart of the conservative Darling Downs. Between construction jobs he kept food on the table with stints in tourism and hospitality, including tours of duty as a kitchen hand, beverage manager and restaurant supervisor on Hamilton Island, and running an abseiling enterprise in the spectacular Kuranda Rain Forest. But that's all ancient history. In 1997, one exam short of his safety officer's ticket, Gillespie returned to NSW to spend a few days with his seriously ill father at Narrabri. He got work, as a leading hand rebuilding the town's main street, and stayed a few months. Back in Sydney, he was talked into trying his hand at steel fixing by mates at the Kingswood Hotel, near Penrith. It was a decision that would change his life. Steel fixers, by and large, are a law unto themselves. Work comes and goes and workers often move from one employer to another, and back again, sometimes in the same week. For their part, the employers, by and large, are what CFMEU secretary Andrew Ferguson calls shonks. Typically, they understate employees to rip off the public on tax, payroll tax, workers comp, top-up insurance and other liabilities. If anyone puts their weights up they usually change the company's name and carry on. From late 1997, Gillespie found himself plying the trade for C and H, Foxy's Reinforcing, Rum Steelfixing, Multifix and Ronnie's Reo. C and H, he thinks, were legit. There were small jobs and some substantial ones too, including redevelopments at the Rosehill and Randwick racecourses and plenty of residential work. With hindsight, Gillespie concedes, most were cutting corners. "They rip the system off blind and it's not just one or two of them, it would be 90 percent of the companies steel fixing in NSW," he says. On one site he worked alongside illegal immigrants. Wage slips were a rarity. He came to grief on a Saturday, laying steel in a creek at the National Rail Centre development at Challora. "It was just one of those things," he says. "I had an armful of big steel rods and was laying them into position.. I ran out of room with my feet and moved one foot backwards, and I heard - pop, pop, pop - and my back was gone." The next work day he reported to the first aid shed and told the boss he wanted to see a doctor. "He just said - fuck off, you're not putting a back claim on my compo. You don't need to see a doctor, take it easy for a couple of days and you'll be alright. "He talked me out of it because, I guess, I didn't want to have a bad back. When you've spent your life in the building industry you don't want to have anything that will stop you getting work when it comes along." He did a couple of weeks with another of his regular employers and the back got neither worse nor better. On that job, workers didn't get paid one week because the employer had gone to Melbourne for the races and done his dough.Most of his workmates, it transpired, were being paid cash in hand and when the Westfield union delegate found out he had the company kicked off the site. "When the boss gets back he calls a meeting with the boys in the Strathfield Hotel. He knows its me who told the union delegate about the wage records and he calls me a useless #@$$ #^$#. "He was furious and I didn't know the other blokes on that job very well. I could see myself walking around the edge of the building and wondering if I was going over the side. "It wasn't something I needed at the time, so I quit." Gillespie went back to the Randwick Racecourse job, got transferred to a big residential development in North Parramatta where constant stair work aggravated his back. Back at Randwick, the pain became unbearable. He went to the first aid shed and filled in the forms. The employer got another worker to drop him at Central Station in the company ute. On the express to Penrith, the employer rang on his mobile. The message was similar to that he had received from the boss when the injury first occurred - don't, under any circumstances, go claiming workers comp. It was June, 2000, the final day of his working life. His doctor sent him for a CAT scan and identified three bulging discs. It was here that the real frustration sent in. "I rang Foxy and told him they said I had a lifetime injury and I would have to make a claim. He just swore at me and hung up," Gillespie recalls. None of the three employers would accept any responsibility. The middle one, the one without wage slips, went so far as to deny he every employed him, something backed up by the lack of documentation. The companies' respective insurers, QBE, GIO and Employers Mutual got in on the act. Between them they have sent him to at least 15 different doctors, orthapaedic specialists included, in an apparent bid to quibble with the diagnosis, since confirmed by MRI. At one point, QBE appeared to have accepted the claim. It backpaid him and started paying weekly entitlements. Then, in March this year, they declined responsibility, cutting off support. "They'd sent me to a Doctor Bornstein in Balmain. Apparently, his report said my injuries were more applicable to one of the other employers than the one they represented. "They cut off the money and the treatment." He hadn't been financial with the union so put his hope in "compensation specialists" PK Simpson. After months they got him to court but arrived without the necessary paperwork and the compensation court has put him back to the bottom of its list. Since March, Gillespie has been getting Centrelink payments as a single disability pensioner and no treatment for his back. He tried to visit an orthapaedic surgeon in Penrith but he wouldn't bulk bill and the $150 consultation fee was out of the question. "I have been in super since year dot, since we started marching down George St, demanding it," he says, "but none of these guys made contributions. "There's no insurance, no compo, no nothing." "I can't believe it, there are days when I make a wrong move and I can't do a thing, not even walk and you know what I do? Usually, I take it out on my girlfriend." Eventually, he swallowed his pride and, out of desperation, rang the CFMEU. They've agreed to take up his case so there is some light on the horizon. Has the experience left him with any advice for others in the steel fixing game around NSW? Sure, but it's not worth wasting breath on - fill in the forms, make sure you get wage slips and that you're entitlements are being paid. "Everyone knows that," he says but, in steel fixing, "you try to enforce it and you don't work" Okay, more personally, what do you want? That's easier. First and foremost, he would like to see the three employers he has had since doing his back locked up in jail. Then, when they are released, the two from New Zealand deported. He would like some money, preferably the workers compensation he is entitled to. Mostly, though, he wants treatment for his back. "I want this whole bloody merry-go-round of lawyers, doctors, shonky bosses and insurance companies to stop and let me off," he said. "Then, I want to get fixed up so I can work again. I want my life back, I want to be able to look after my girlfriend and our daughter. "I want to be a man again."
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