Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to call out the thuggish wage suppression tactics being used by Woodside against their own employees. In June of last year—that's eight months ago—a majority of Woodside offshore gas workers voted that they wanted to negotiate together for a new agreement through their unions, the AWU and the MUA. In a civil workplace, where the employer respects their workers' basic human rights to join a union and negotiate together, that majority vote would be respected, and then they would get down to bargaining in good faith. That would be normal practice. Instead, what we've seen from one of the richest and most profitable companies in Australia is a disgraceful abuse of legal process.

In the last eight months, Woodside has lodged not one, not two, not three, but nine frivolous legal challenges against their workers' majority support petition. And all nine of Woodside's legal challenges have failed. After eight months and nine legal disputes, Woodside's workers thought they were finally going to get the chance to begin work on a new agreement—until late last night. Woodside announced it's filing a 10th legal appeal. This 10th appeal is on the grounds that Woodside thinks supervisors should not have the right to be included in the agreement, a right that they are requesting. That is despite the ruling by the Fair Work Commission as well last week, to quote directly from Deputy President Binet, that it 'is not uncommon for agreements and awards to cover frontline supervisors'. She said: 'The evidence supports the conclusion that there is nothing unfair in the supervisors being part of the employee group.' It sounds pretty clear to me. And what's pretty clear is that those supervisors voted to be part of an agreement.

The fact is that this latest appeal is as absurd and vexatious as the last nine failed applications. In one of those applications, Woodside claimed without any evidence that some of the signatures on the petition were fake. Then, in another application, Woodside demanded access to the unredacted signatures so that it could verify them against signatures in their own records, only to later admit that they had no such records. Woodside then argued that, because they had successfully dragged their workers through the courts for so long, the petition was now out of date. But, when the Australian Workers Union offered to pay for a new ballot, Woodside strongly opposed that too. The AWU national secretary, Dan Walton, summed this up by saying:

Thousands of sensible companies sit down to negotiate with workers and their representatives every year.

He said:

… a massive Australian company like Woodside should not be allowed to stack up meritless claims to put pressure on a union's resources with the sole intention of bullying its workforce.

Offshore Alliance coordinator Zach Duncalfe also was spot on in saying:

Unfortunately, companies with bottomless pockets like Woodside have the means to frustrate and delay what should be a simple proceeding before the commission.

If Woodside have a limitless sum of money set aside to waste their workers' time, to waste unions' time and to waste the precious time and resources of our legal system then perhaps they aren't paying enough tax.

Woodside have made a fortune in the last few years by jacking up gas prices paid by every single Australian household and business. Woodside have made a fortune by exploiting the tragic situation in Ukraine, and they have the gall to complain about price caps. They have the audacity to rob their workers of their legal right to join a union and bargain together. If this is how Woodside CEO Meg O'Neill runs the business, it would be very interesting to see her before a Senate inquiry explaining it. That's the way that we represent and engage with Australians wanting their democratic voice to be heard. If that's her policy then that's something that should be held to account by the Australian people. We need to demand a serious change of behaviour from big corporates like Woodside and companies like Qantas when it comes to their pattern of thuggish behaviour against their own workforces and hardworking Australians.