Offshore platform workers at Woodside Energy are preparing to strike, as protracted negotiations over pay and conditions threaten to disrupt Australian gas exports, putting international markets on edge.
Union representatives said on Sunday workers planned to strike if the next round of bargaining, scheduled for Wednesday, was unsatisfactory.
“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,” said Brad Gandy, a spokesperson for the Offshore Alliance.
The alliance consists of the Australian Workers’ Union and Maritime Union of Australia.
Woodside was contacted for comment.
The unions are engaged in negotiations with Woodside and Chevron to lock in industry standard wage rates and conditions in a sector that typically uses individual contracts.
“Offshore Alliance members don’t take industrial action lightly, but Woodside is really leaving them with little choice here,” Gandy said.
Unions representing offshore gas platforms won the right to collectively bargain with Woodside earlier this year after a lengthy legal battle. This also triggered rights for workers to take protected industrial action at Woodside’s North West Shelf offshore gas platforms.
The Chevron and Woodside projects combine to make up more than 10% of global liquified natural gas supply, generated through offshore and onshore operations in Western Australia.
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The prolonged negotiations have sparked volatility in European gas prices in recent weeks as the likelihood of industrial action increases.
While liquified gas from the affected projects does not ship directly to Europe, any disruption to supplies would impact a global market already scrambling to replace Russian supplies.
Unions are required to give companies seven working days’ notice before industrial action. If it issues a notice after Wednesday’s meeting with Woodside, a strike could occur as early as 2 September.
Chevron workers are also getting closer to striking. The results of ballots that asked workers whether they were prepared to take industrial action will be known from Thursday, setting up the potential for prolonged disruptions to the large Gorgon and Wheatstone projects.
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