Chevron ordered back to mediation over LNG dispute
Chevron and the Offshore Alliance of trade unions have been sent back to mediation ahead of a full bench hearing of the Fair Work Commission set for September 22 in a last-ditch effort to resolve the protracted industrial dispute that is threatening Australia’s LNG exports.
The decision on Tuesday by FWC president Justice Adam Hatcher came as work stoppages at three Chevron-run LNG facilities in Western Australia extended into a fifth day, and are due to ramp up to two weeks of 24 one-hour stoppages from Thursday.
Chevron’s Gorgon LNG plant ships LNG to Japan and elsewhere in Asia.
The US giant has also warned of risks from the industrial action to domestic gas supply in WA, despite the unions having assured the company they will maintain critical personnel to protect production, so far unaffected.
Chevron has asked the FWC to make a declaration of “intractable bargaining” in the dispute – in a bid for enforceable arbitration to resolve it – saying the positions of the two sides are “entrenched” with significant differences. It claims the unions are seeking terms well beyond employment agreements struck at similar LNG projects in Australia by Woodside Energy, Shell and Japan’s Inpex, and that further talks would be fruitless.
But the Offshore Alliance – comprising the Australian Workers’ Union and the Maritime Union of Australia – opposes the move.
“We think that the negotiations are far from intractable,” AWU senior national legal officer Zachary Duncalfe told the hearing in Melbourne on Tuesday, proposing further mediated negotiations before Commissioner Bernie Riordan in Perth to extend talks that took place last week but ended on Friday with no resolution.
He said there was “significant movement” in five key issues
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