Chevron sweetener to end LNG strike threat: $222000 pay check for working just 40% of the year - Upstream Online

Chevron sweetener to end LNG strike threat: $222,000 pay check for working just 40% of the year | Upstream Online

Offshore Alliance (OA) members working on three Chevron gas and LNG facilities in Australia — Gorgon, Wheatstone platform and Wheatstone downstream — overnight into Tuesday voted in favour of three proposed Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBA) with the US supermajor, effectively putting a halt to strikes at its liquefied natural gas projects.

The OA noted that these agreements deliver members “secure jobs, fixed rosters, career progression and significant improvements in pay and conditions of employment”.

These rosters spell out what hours and which shifts workers will perform while on location with these stints being followed by six weeks off, which effectively translates to working 40% of the year for typical remuneration of between A$300,000 and A$350,000 (US$190,600 to US$222,000), a source explained.

“Chevron Australia is pleased to confirm the proposed Enterprise Agreements for frontline field operations employees at our Gorgon and Wheatstone gas facilities have been supported by the majority of employees in a vote,” a Chevron Australia spokesperson told Upstream.

“The agreements achieve sustainable, market competitive outcomes that are in the interests of our employees and the company.

“Following the vote, we will proceed to have the agreements approved by the Fair Work Commission.”

Upstream understands that once approved by the FWC, these negotiated agreements will be in force for four years, which will be welcomed by Chevron as it effectively removes the threat of related industrial action to at least 2027.

However, despite seemingly being happy with the outcome for its members, the OA — an alliance between The Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) and the Maritime Union of Australia — continued to slate Chevron on Tuesday.

“In 2020, the need for the protection of a union-negotiated enterprise agreement became crystal clear when Chevron used [the] Covid [pandemic] to purge their workforce, assisted by the appalling one-sided contracts employees were on,” said the OA.

“Chevron tried every trick in the book to bully their workforce, from stand-over tactics and countless legal letters and threats to bringing in an untrained, untested and incompetent workforce (to large hazardous facilities) in an attempt to try and destroy the unity of its own employees.”

But ultimately, and not before OA’s members had started Protected Industrial Action at Chevron's Australian LNG facilities which combined account for some 6% of global supply, the members secured all of their key bargaining claims.

Offshore Alliance spokesperson, AWU WA secretary Brad Gandy, said the OA members at Chevron never blinked during the negotiations.

“Throughout all stages of the campaign alliance members were steadfast in their determination for an industry standard enterprise agreement,” said Gandy.

“Chevron took a hostile approach from the start, ultimately going as far as bringing in untrained and incompetent workers to work at its facilities during protected industrial action in an attempt to undermine our members’ solidarity and efforts to secure an industry standard agreement.

“At the outset Chevron told the Alliance that our members’ claims would never be accepted by the company. [However], here we are now with three agreements full of them, and it was the collective and unbending strength of Offshore Alliance members that got them there.”

Five years to the day

The Offshore Alliance on 30 October celebrated its five-year anniversary when union density was almost non-existent, and the big oil and gas companies and contractors “controlled the industrial relations narrative by using the back of the axe if workers so much as spoke up about safety, rates of pay or workplace rights”, it said.

Over the five years, the Offshore Alliance and its members have taken more industrial action per capita, than any other industry sector, in the negotiation of union standard EBAs.

“[However], there is still plenty to do to ensure [Australia’s] West Coast oil and gas workers get their fair share of the economic wealth being generated by the frontline workforce, and the unity of West Coast oil and gas will never be broken,” said the OA, adding it would continue to build its industrial capacity across every offshore and onshore oil and gas facility.

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