OFFSHORE ALLIANCE AWU & MUA - FIGHTING FROM THE FRONT The Offshore Alliance is a joint organising campaign of the AWU and MUA to fight for improved pay and conditions and standards of West Coast oil and gas workers. 2025 has been another big year for the Offshore Alliance. If 2024 was marked as the year the Offshore Alliance took on West Coast and multinational offshore construction companies to significantly improve the pay and conditions of our members, 2025 is the year that the Alliance has made it’s mark on onshore oil and gas construction projects in WA. PLUTO 2 - BECHTEL’S FAILED GAMBIT
The biggest onshore construction project in Western Australia right now is Pluto 2 - and what a shambles it has been. Pluto 2 is disorganised and characterised by a failure by Bechtel to meet critical deadlines, KPI’s and quality control standards. The project is a long way behind schedule and is a revolving door of workers leaving due to poor pay and conditions and hostile management. The low hourly rates of pay are a key feature of Pluto 2, with workers being paid 30% less than the real wages of oil and gas construction workers at Chevron and Woodside’s Wheatstone project paid back in 2017.
Superannuation is paid on just 54% of project hours, and Pluto 2 workers are paid for working 10 hours a day despite door-to-door hours on Pluto 2 (including breaks and travel) being 11.5 hours per day. The Offshore Alliance were asked by members who had moved onto the Pluto 2 project to re-organise Pluto 2 in April 2025 – some 3 years after the project commenced. Those members who had ended up at Pluto 2 were disgusted by the low wages, poor safety standards and repugnant treatment of worker by Bechtel – the US multinational project management company running the job. In taking the same rank and file approach to Pluto 2 as the approach we have adopted on every oil and gas project, site and facility since we formed in October 2018, the Offshore Alliance has now organised several hundred workers at Pluto 2 with 99% of OA members supporting and Protected Industrial Action on site in the new year.
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