Businesses involved in the first stage of the $12 billion Pluto project are today seeking Federal Court intervention to end a strike by a majority of the 3,500 workers on the Burrup Peninsula construction site.
Businesses involved in the first stage of the $12 billion Pluto project have won a Federal Court order to end a strike by more than 1,600 workers on the Burrup Peninsula construction site.
The WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry is representing a group of 13 contractors on the Pilbara project and took an urgent application to the court in Perth this afternoon seeking an order for the workers to return to work.
CCIWA said the court ruled in the employers' favour, requiring the workers return to work and providing for damages if they don't. The order was against the individual workers who had allegedly acted in defiance of their own unions.
It is understood Woodside Petroleum, the project’s proponent, is considering making a similar application to get workers to return to the construction of the first train in the Pluto project, one of a dozen mooted or started projects which is driving a new boom in Western Australia.
The industrial relations battle over accommodation practices known as ‘motelling’ has widened this week with a small strike of some 600 workers last week mushrooming into a much bigger group walking off the job, disregarding a ruling by Fair Work Australia on Saturday that strike action must stop.
The decision was made by Fair Work Australia commissioner Danny Cloghan, whose prior roles include being chief of staff to former health minister and attornery general Jim McGinty.
Applicants to Saturday's FWA decision were AGC Industries; Modern Access Services; Downer EDI Engineering Power; Monadelphous Engineering Associates; United Group Resources; CBI Constructors; Decmil Australia; Freo Group; Mammoet Australia; PCH Group; RCR Construction & Maintenance; Positron Trident; and Thiess Kentz.
The respondent unions were the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU); Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU); and Communications, Electrical, Electronic, Energy, Information, Postal, Plumbing and Allied Services Union of Australia (CEPU). Members of these unions were also subject to the order.
Another firm, Killarnee Civil & Concrete Contractors, is also understood sought to apply for similar orders to prevent its workers striking. Its hearing was postponed from today until next week.
While unions have been blamed for stirring up the original trouble, it is understood union leaders have avoided being linked to the current action, in which workers planned to down tools until Saturday.
Seamen in the Maritime Union of Australia have had an action lasting for weeks that is believed to have cost shipping companies $20 million.
Just how much the Pluto strikes will cost has not yet been estimated however this week’s escalation, considered a return to the bad old days of industrial relations in the 1970s and 1980s, has business worried about how international investors and commodity markets will view Australian resources.
