Esso lockout threatens Victorian gas

Bob Briton

From next Tuesday, Esso sub-contractors controlling critical 
construction work on Bass Straight oilrigs will lock out over 300 
workers as a result of a dispute over rosters. The lockout will 
be imposed over the Easter break and is not expected to be fully 
lifted until May 6, 2004.

For 25 years oilrig workers and their families have ordered their 
lives around a 7-days-on, 7-days-off roster. Esso and their 
subcontractors now want to introduce a punishing 14-days-on, 14 
days-off arrangement. The change is reputed to be able to save 
around $1 million a year for the transnational that, by the way, 
made a profit of $722 million from its Bass Strait operations 
alone in 2002.

Workers have resisted the roster changes for the past eight 
months and suggested a number of other ways to make the savings 
sought by the bosses. Esso rejected the ideas and insisted on the 
roster changes. Naturally, workers are worried about the 
stability of their family life.

The lockout follows on an application from Esso's subcontractors 
to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to void the 
agreement containing the employees' condition of employment. If 
their application is successful, workers will suffer a 50 percent 
(!) pay cut and be put under pressure to accept an employment 
agreement that includes the family unfriendly 14 day rosters.

This week the Australian Workers' Union (AWU), the Australian 
Manufacturing Workers' Union and Electrical Trade Union will be 
seeking an injunction from the Federal Court to prevent the 
lockout being planned by subcontractors Kellog, Brown and Root, 
Corp Instrument Engineering and Worley ABB.

The AWU is also concerned that the actions of ESSO and the 
subcontractors could put Melbourne's winter supply of gas in 
jeopardy. The bosses appear prepared to run this risk even though 
the workers were not carrying out any industrial action.

The AWU put it this way: "We don't want to be pushing panic 
buttons but it appears that once again Esso's blind drive to save 
a few cents here and there will leave ordinary Victorians without 
gas. The workers and the unions have been fully prepared to 
negotiate in good faith over this issue for over eight months, 
but every time we try to talk to Esso we come up against a brick 
wall. A cynical person could even think that Esso may want to 
have the dispute."

Victorians still remember the tragedy of the explosion at Esso's 
Longford gas processing plant where penny-pinching safety 
standards cost two workers their lives and injured eight others 
on September 25, 1998. They also recall the three weeks of 
disruption to gas supplies that followed the incident.