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.
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.
CFMMEU mining and energy division members have this week kicked off protected action in BHP's Queensland coal mines, sparking early sparring over the company's proposed ban on allowing workers back into their accommodation camp while on strike.
The FWC has refused to suspend engineers' industrial action at a Virgin Australia subsidiary while their employer pursues an intractable bargaining declaration, in an early test of the new Secure Jobs provision.
Law firm Ashurst says the looming multi-employer bargaining laws might explain the results of a survey in which 65% of employers say they intend to initiate agreement negotiations in the next six months.
A FWC full bench will tomorrow consider whether to terminate or suspend tugboat operator Svitzer's planned indefinite national lockout on Friday, after the company told Vice President Adam Hatcher it is not prepared to delay it and does not believe conciliation will help.
Towage company Svitzer is set to lock out its harbour tugboat workforce, claiming it has been forced into it by continuing disruptive protected action by three maritime unions.
The RTBU says an "unprecedented" NSW Government court case claiming that deactivating Opal card readers at Sydney train stations is not protected action and seeking to recoup lost revenue will force it to revert to disruptive strikes, as the union files its own court action in response.
A major plastics manufacturer has this morning applied for the FWC to halt protected action at a plant in Melbourne, where the AWU says the only current action is the employer's lockout of its members.
Unions and Shell Australia have signed off on an in-principle agreement after a bitter campaign that resulted in the world's largest floating LNG platform being shuttered last month amid continuing protected strike action.
