BHP hit with Fair Work Commission ultimatum from AMWU for South Flank and Mining Area C iron ore mines

Mining giant BHP is again being threatened by a union, with its two flagship iron ore mines increasingly the target of unions trying to muscle into the mineral-rich Pilbara. The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union has given BHP a May 1 deadline to address claims relating to the South Flank and Mining Area C mining operations. The AMWU has threatened to force the miner to the Fair Work Commission if its requests are not met. The Australian Workers Union, Mining and Energy Union and the Electrical Trades Union are also involved in negotiations with BHP to settle new enterprise agreements at South Flank and Mining Area C. Such negotiations would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Militant unionism was rife across the Pilbara’s iron ore mines in the 1980s and caused major disruption. Over the next three decades unions didn’t play a major role in Australia’s most important mining region, but the Albanese Government’s changes to industrial relations laws since 2022 have re-emboldened the union movement. Unions can now bargain with companies even if they do not have support from a majority of the workforce. The AMWU used this policy reform to bypass the majority support process and trigger enterprise agreement negotiations with BHP. Earlier this month, BHP’s chief people officer Jad Vodopija lamented the union impact on productivity at BHP’s WA iron ore operations. “In the Pilbara alone across the last 12 months, right of entries have increased by 400 per cent, and the reason that’s a big deal isn’t the right of entry itself, but it’s the complicatedness that brings into your business there, the distraction for your line leaders and supervisors needing to shepherd and steward these individuals,” Mr Vodopija said. “Then on a weekly basis, folks in my team are at the commission because now I’ve got argy-bargy over which union is going to represent this body of employees or that body of employees. “So there’s a complicatedness that is creeping into our system of work.” The AMWU said on Tuesday it had proposed an enterprise agreement for about 250 maintenance workers at South Flank and Mining Area C, which together form the world’s biggest iron ore production hub. But the union claims BHP wants to include its proposal with a broader agreement that covers about 1100 workers at the sites. “The AMWU’s position is clear — we want a maintenance agreement for maintenance workers. Metals and electrical trades perform completely different work to operations workers, they need their own agreement that deals with their specific issues,” AMWU WA state secretary Steve McCartney said. The AMWU’s threat to take BHP to the FWC comes less than a fortnight after the AWU, acting on behalf of its informal Western Mine Workers Alliance partnership with the MEU, made an application to the FWC. The AWU claimed BHP was not acting “in good faith” and said the miner had “again postponed its scheduled bargaining meeting”. BHP, which declined to comment on the AMWU’s claims, is not the only Pilbara iron ore giant in union cross-hairs. Last month, the AWU took Rio Tinto to the workplace umpire to get an agreement covering one of its Pilbara iron ore mines. The AWU claims to have signed up more than half of Rio’s Paraburdoo mining workforce — equating to “well over” 400 employees required for the FWC to issue a majority support bargaining order. If the FWC grants the order, Rio will be forced to the negotiation table to establish a new enterprise bargaining agreement, and if a new one cannot be reached the miner faces the prospect of costly strike action at a key mine.