Work­ers of the Na­tion­al Quar­ries (NQ) Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed are call­ing for their Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer’s res­ig­na­tion, say­ing they are not hap­py with his man­age­ment style.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day at NQ’s head­quar­ters in Mal­oney, where some 70 work­ers protest­ed, Pe­ter Burke, Se­nior Labour Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer at the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union said they are fed up.

He said that a few weeks ago, the com­pa­ny shut down op­er­a­tions at two lo­ca­tions with­out ex­plain­ing the rea­son to the work­ers, and around 150 work­ers have been af­fect­ed by this.

“The com­pa­ny has shut down the op­er­a­tions both at Blan­chisseuse, and the larg­er op­er­a­tions at Tu­rure, and even­tu­al­ly, there would have been no ma­te­ri­als to send. The com­pa­ny now is at a stand­still, and the work­ers, out of con­cern not on­ly for the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty but the fu­ture of the com­pa­ny, have made a state­ment to­day that the man­age­ment will not be al­lowed to de­stroy this com­pa­ny,” he said.

Burke al­leged that there are con­trac­tors who are steal­ing from the com­pa­ny.

“The com­pa­ny is pay­ing con­trac­tors for less ma­te­r­i­al, more mon­ey. In oth­er words, they’re bleed­ing the com­pa­ny of funds, and they are not pro­duc­ing what the com­pa­ny is pay­ing for,” he said.

Burke said there were many is­sues be­fore, how­ev­er, things have been es­ca­lat­ing be­cause of the new man­age­ment.

“A poor lev­el of man­age­ment that has tak­en place in NQ … a to­tal lack of main­te­nance, even sim­ple re­pairs. For in­stance, a pump, which is crit­i­cal to sand and grav­el op­er­a­tions on­ly cost­ing $10,000, which rep­re­sents about one load or two loads of ma­te­ri­als.

“He (CEO) re­fused to au­tho­rise the re­pair of that pump, so the op­er­a­tions there had to stop. We al­so have a sit­u­a­tion where the ma­te­ri­als re­quired to main­tain op­er­a­tions have not been pro­vid­ed to the work­ers, the main­te­nance peo­ple are com­plain­ing they can’t get spares and they can’t get re­sources,” Burke said.

Burke and the work­ers present called for the swift res­ig­na­tion of the CEO.

“The OW­TU firm­ly sup­ports the work­ers in call­ing for new man­age­ment, a new CEO at Na­tion­al Quar­ries, be­cause this is un­ten­able,” he said.

Burke out­lined the changes the work­ers want to see.

“Fix the pump at sand and grav­el, en­sure that the main­te­nance gets what is re­quired, make sure that the op­er­a­tions in the com­pa­ny op­er­ate with­in the am­bit of safe and best prac­tis­es with HSE. “We want to en­sure that the work­ers are paid for the work that they are do­ing, and we want them to look at the con­tract­ing out of work be­cause that is where the funds are be­ing leeched from the com­pa­ny. “And fi­nal­ly, we have to look at the man­age­ment style of the cur­rent CEO, and take cor­rec­tive mea­sures im­me­di­ate­ly,” he said.

Burke added the work­ers are pre­pared to protest again.

Ef­forts to reach NQ’s CEO for a re­sponse to the claims were un­suc­cess­ful. Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Stu­art Young, but up to late yes­ter­day evening, there was no re­sponse.