Offshore Alliance employee representatives at Woodside’s LNG facilities off Western Australia’s north west coast met this morning at 0700 AWST to discuss an in-principle agreement reached with the company late last night by their negotiating team.
At the meeting Offshore Alliance employee representatives were supportive of the in-principle agreement negotiated yesterday in a marathon 15 hour meeting which continued into the small hours of this morning.
It was further resolved that no notice of intention to take protected industrial action would be provided to Woodside whilst the agreement was being finalised and put to vote – subject to the proposed agreement reflecting all agreed matters
The in-principle agreement will now go before an all-member meeting tonight at 19.30 AWST which will determine whether Offshore Alliance members support the agreement being rolled out to a vote.
If that endorsement is secured, the Offshore Alliance will work with Woodside to ensure that the proposed agreement is drafted to reflect all matters that have been agreed in principle, and subject to the proposed agreement doing so, will support the agreement at the ballot box.
The Offshore Alliance is an alliance between The Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA).
Offshore Alliance spokesperson, AWU WA Secretary Brad Gandy, said that because the Offshore Alliance is a member-led union, all members will have an opportunity to voice their opinion about the in-principle agreement prior to the agreement receiving unconditional support from the union.
“The Offshore Alliance was instructed by members to secure an industry standard enterprise agreement that met key outcomes. It’s up to the members to determine if the deal brokered this morning meets that. The Alliance is confident that this is the case,” says Mr Gandy.
News of the in-principle agreement being reached between the Alliance and Woodside closely followed news of multinational Chevron rolling out two enterprise agreements to its workforce that are not supported by the union.
“Chevron has chosen to roll out agreements to its Gorgon and Wheatstone Downstream workforce that are not supported by the Alliance as they do not address key bargaining claims and do not meet the industry standard,” says Mr Gandy.
“The Alliance will be strongly recommending to members to vote ‘no’ to these non-union Chevron agreements, just as it did when Chevron did something similar for the Wheatstone Platform workforce.
“The result of the Wheatstone Platform ballot was a 98% ‘no’ vote. Chevron should expect more of the same from these ballots.” says Mr Gandy.
