, it will cover the gap between WorkCover (workers' compensation) payments and the cost of tests. The unions are asking for payment for medical tests and treatment for all Alcoa staff and contractors.
Alcoa sent the workers a fact sheet to give to their private physicians. This sheet also claimed that for the past 20 years employees had been made well aware of the risks, and had lower levels of exposure than the Canadian workers. It stated: "For example, if your patient worked in direct contact with coal tar pitch for 10 years, and the rest of the time worked in less exposed jobs, the risk may be as low as a quarter of the maximum risk."
This is playing down the potential dangers as much as possible. Such calculations of risk are based on average figures, and omit the dangers of transient bursts, giving intermittent higher exposures.
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) organiser for Geelong, Chris Spindler, said the company is keeping its records on workers who have contracted cancer, as well as internal health checks, confidential. Furthermore, it has rejected union demands that it place advertisements in national daily newspapers to alert former contractors.
But the union's criticisms come after the fact. It is striking that it was the company that made public the results of the five-year-old Canadian research, not the union, which has carried out no major campaign over the health dangers confronting aluminium workers.
After a brief flurry, media coverage of the issue has ceased. Likewise, politicians have attempted to present Alcoa in a good light. In a revealing comment in state parliament, Ian Tresize, the Labor member for Geelong, congratulated Alcoa for being the first employer to warn employees and for ensuring that workers wear protective safety masks. Tresize requested that the minister responsible for workers compensation refer the matter to the NOHSC.
Equally respectful to Alcoa, Local Government and WorkCover Minister, Bob Cameron, replied that his office had drafted a letter to the NOHSC asking for a national response. He stated that with four smelters located outside Victoria, a national register must be established. He said he had ordered the Victorian WorkCover Authority to enter into discussions with Alcoa to see how it may assist the NOHSC with any necessary work.
Alcoa's relationship with both Labor and Liberal state governments has been extremely cordial since it invested in Victoria. In 1984 the Cain Labor government struck an electricity supply deal with the company that cost taxpayers $1.2 billion in subsidies pegged to the world price of aluminium.
Today the company is not concerned by parliamentary scrutiny. Chairman of the Aluminium Company of America (Alcoa) Paul H. O'Neill stated in a recent interview with the magazine Aluminium Today: "I don't see environmental issues as a negative for aluminium or Alcoa, they are our friend. As long as legislatures and governing bodies don't do stupid things, we'll be fine."
Paul Johnson, a Point Henry worker, told the WSWS: "I have worked at Alcoa for 14 years, and during my apprenticeship we worked in every area of the plant, so I've worked with coal tar pitch, but only for a short period. Without a doubt the exposure was there earlier. I work on permanent afternoon shift with one other bloke. Thirty-five years ago he started as a production worker—he's since become a tradesman. When he started, they shovelled up the pitch by hand with shovels, and the air was black with it. The workers didn't wear any protection most of the time.
"Alcoa has provided fairly good respiratory protection for about the last six years, but before [that] there were just masks. Now there is positive air displacement—the worker wears a helmet and it blows fresh air from a filter pack on his back or on his belt, and there is a battery pack. But workers don't always wear them, because they slow you down, and when there is a push for more production, it is easier not to wear them.
"Alcoa has admitted the risks about cancer, but is trying to contain the panic. A few people 