Workers at Chevron’s Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG projects in Western Australia will proceed with Protected Industrial Action (PIA), participating in rolling stoppages, bans and limitations which will begin next week.
The Offshore Alliance (OA), an alliance between the Australian Workers’ Union and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), said late on Monday (28 August) that it had served Chevron with a formal notice of PIA on all three West Coast facilities.
The strike action is to commence on Thursday, 7 September, and include 500 alliance members who will be participating in rolling stoppages, bans and limitations which will escalate each week until Chevron agrees to their terms.
The notice was issued following a 100% ‘yes’ vote from all OA members on the three Chevron facilities. Workers at Chevron’s downstream services and Gorgon were expected to return their ballot on 24 August while those at Wheatstone platform were slated to do so on 28 August.
“It is set to cost Chevron their LNG exports as PIA starts to bite”, the alliance said.
Last week, Australian energy giant Woodside averted strike action by reaching an in-principle agreement with the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU), the Electrical Trades Union, and other bargaining representatives on an enterprise agreement (EA) covering 150 employees on its North West Shelf offshore platforms.
The next steps will be for the enterprise agreement (EA) to be finalised and then voted on by employees and approved by the Fair Work Commission. In the meantime, the unions have committed to not filing a notice of protected industrial action while that process is underway.
If the in-principle agreement is endorsed, it will leave Chevron as the sole operator of gas fields in Western Australia without an enterprise agreement with its workforce. Workers at Shell’s LNG facilities secured an EA this time last year after 76 days of protected industrial action while workers at INPEX’s facilities secured a deal with the union earlier in 2022.