Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner

In September 2006, Woodside engaged CBI to perform mechanical construction services at the North West Shelf LNG Plant.

CBI had two agreements in place. The AMWU was a party to one and the CFMEU and AWU were party to the other. The nominal expiry date of both agreements was August 2009.

On 13 October 2008, a representative of the CFMEU demanded that CBI terminate its employees at the site, make redundancy payments and then re-engage the employees for further works. This demand was on the basis that the union believed the project had been completed.

CBI believed that additional works awarded by Woodside formed part of the ongoing project.

On 14 October 2008, 157 employees engaged in strike action. On that same day CBI was granted an order pursuant to s.496 of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 that all CBI employees not take industrial action for one month. Strike action continued for seven days between 17 October 2008 and 24 October 2008.

On 22 October 2008, CBI issued proceedings against its employees to obtain injunctions and have penalties imposed for that industrial action. The ABCC intervened in this proceeding.

On 28 October 2008, the Federal Court ordered that CBI employees be restrained from failing to attend for work.

On 9 February 2009, the injunction was vacated as the Project was complete.

ABCC proceeding

On 24 September 2009, the Federal Court made orders allowing the ABCC to become a second applicant in the proceeding. On 30 October 2009, the ABCC was made the sole applicant in the proceeding.