Offshore Alliance members on Woodside's offshore LNG platforms Goodwyn Alpha, North Rankin Complex and Angel Platform off the coast of Karratha in Western Australia's North West applied for a protected action ballot in the Fair Work Commission overnight.
The ballot will allow members of the Offshore Alliance to vote on whether to endorse legal industrial action in support of their claims for an enterprise bargaining agreement.
Woodside has spent the last nine months in the Fair Work Commission and The Federal Court opposing workers' right to bargain for an enterprise agreement where they failed on 13 occasions.
For more than three decades Woodside's employees have been covered by individual contracts which have failed to provide workers with secure jobs, certainty in key employment terms and benchmark pay and conditions.
The Fair Work Commission is likely to determine the union's protected action ballot application this week.
Spokesperson for the Offshore Alliance which is an alliance between the Australian Workers' Union and the Maritime Union of Australia, AWU WA Secretary Brad Gandy says Woodside needs to come to terms with the fact their workers want an EBA.
"Every Australian worker has the right to an enterprise bargaining agreement if they want one and Woodside needs to face this basic fact," says spokesperson for the Offshore Alliance, Brad Gandy.
"Woodside might operate in other jurisdictions where workers have fewer rights but in Australia workers have the right to negotiate an enterprise bargaining agreement.
"The sooner Woodside stops trying to delay an enterprise bargaining agreement with their workforce and gets back around the bargaining table the better.
"Woodside are so busy making mega profits selling Australian LNG to the world they have forgotten the people who get it out from under the seabed and get it onto ships," says spokesperson for the Offshore Alliance, Brad Gandy.
