After overseeing three further days of negotiations, FWC member Bernie Riordan says Chevron and unions are "on the precipice" of "historical first agreements" and has urged them to accept by 9am tomorrow his recommendation to resolve the bargaining dispute or risk the settled issues "simply evaporating".
As Chevron workers prepare to start industrial action this afternoon and the FWC continues week-long talks to resolve the underlying bargaining dispute for its Wheatstone downstream and Gorgon facilities, the tribunal's president will conduct a preliminary hearing next week of the company's bid for an intractable bargaining declaration for its Wheatstone platform.
The IEU is urging Queensland's Catholic school teachers and support staff to reject a "punitive" proposed agreement that it claims will deliver the biggest cuts to their working conditions in two decades, but the employer says there are "no cuts".
A FWC member has issued the "strongest recommendation" for AMWU members at an Ampol refinery to cease industrial action and vote up a new deal, after expressing her view that she lacked the power to convene a second post-PABO compulsory conciliation conference.
The Offshore Alliance and the ETU have notified Chevron that it will hit its Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG facilities with rolling stoppages and work bans from next Thursday, with the unions deriding its decision to put an unsupported deal to a vote tomorrow.
Woodside has narrowly averted impending industrial action at its North West Shelf gas platforms after reaching an in-principle deal endorsed by Offshore Alliance and ETU members this morning, while protected action ballots at Chevron are set to close today.
The UFU's Victorian branch will press ahead with an application under the Secure Jobs intractable bargaining provisions, despite receiving a long-awaited pay offer covering thousands of firefighters.
Chevron's directly-employed workforce on its Wheatstone offshore LNG platforms has overwhelmingly rejected a non-union deal in a ballot that closed last week, according to the Offshore Alliance.
The CPSU says an APSC offer that presumes agencies will approve flexibility requests and stops them capping days spent working from home is "ground breaking", but the union is still preparing to take industrial action as it waits for a "considerably improved" pay offer.
BHP has played down the impact of industrial action at its Queensland coal mines, highlighting that the protected action won support from only about 15% of Operations Services production employees in Queensland.
