THE Federal Court imposes fines on workers who engaged in an unlawful strike in West Australian.   

September 2013 

Federal Court judge John Gilmour found 117 CBI Construction workers guilty and fined them a combined $1,068,000 for walking off the job illegally. 

Justice Gilmour levelled penalties of $10,000 on 24 of the strikers at the Woodside LNG Expansion Project on the Burrup Peninsula, near Karratha, He said the strike had caused significant project delays and economic losses for the $8 billion Pluto project. 

It was said that the conduct of the employees was wilful and deliberate in defying an Australian Industrial Relations Commission return-to-work order. Employees had the ability to exercise a dispute through the settlement procedure without the need to take unlawful industrial action. It comes down to accountability. 

The Federal Court ordered a total of $680,125 of the penalties be paid within 60 days.  The remaining $387,875 will be suspended, and payable only if the workers break the industrial law within the next three years. 

As well as the 24 workers fined $10,000 a head, a further 61 were hit with fines of $5000, with an additional $5000 suspended for three years. Thirty-two workers who went on strike for between one and seven days were fined between $1000 and $8750. 

The strike took place after workers claimed they were entitled to a redundancy payment and re-employment during the next phase of the project under their union collective agreement. 

On the first day of the strike, the AIRC issued the workers with a return-to-work order.