Woodside employees who are members of union partnership the Offshore Alliance have voted unanimously to take industrial action on Wednesday if an agreement on pay and job security is not reached.
The alliance, comprising the Australian Workers’ Union and the Maritime Union of Australia, held a meeting on Sunday with members working at the oil and gas company’s North West Shelf platforms Goodwyn Alpha, North Rankin Complex and Angel Deep.
The alliance alleged Woodside had resorted to hostile tactics during the negotiation process, and all members voted to strike if their demands for pay parity with other large operators and greater job and roster security are not met.
In a statement, the alliance said the company had accused a senior member of the Fair Work Commission of apprehended bias in favour of the union, which was rejected by both the member and the commission on appeal. The company had also unsuccessfully sought the names of all workers supporting the union application and tried to obtain a copy of the signatures collected by the union on a petition supporting collective bargaining, the alliance said.
It said Woodside had subsequently admitted it did not have copies of its employees’ signatures on file.
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An Offshore Alliance spokesperson, AWU West Australian secretary Brad Gandy, said it was time for Woodside to accept that its workers wanted an industry standard enterprise agreement.
“Woodside tried every tactic it could think of to avoid bargaining with its workers as a collective, but in the end the company failed to maintain the status quo it liked – one where what the company says goes,” Gandy said.
“It is the recalcitrance and pigheadedness of Woodside that has placed the company in the position it is in now, not the workers.