Plastics manufacturer Qenos clamps down on industrial action
For the first time in 25 years, Qenos workers in Altona, in Melbourne’s west, went on strike this month. Thirty-five plant operators voted unanimously to walk out to demand safer operating conditions, a 7 percent pay rise over the next three years and the removal of a four-year traineeship that systematically underpays new staff.
In response, the company announced an indefinite lockout starting on the day of the strike. Ben Davis, secretary of the Australian Workers Union, which covers plant operators and technicians at the site, told ABC news that 90 percent of the workers’ claims were ignored by Qenos.
However, it wasn’t the pressure of the lockout that ended the strike on 12 October. The company mounted a legal attack using the industrial relations tribunal, the Fair Work Commission, to terminate the protected industrial action as quickly as possible.
Qenos Altona is Australia’s largest plastics producer and the only manufacturer of polyethylene (common plastic) and polymers in the country. The company’s annual revenue is $750 million. According to its website, “If you see or use plastic in your household items, it was probably made by us”. The plastics are produced using ethane extracted from the Esso Long Island Point gas plant in Western Port Bay. The relationship between the two companies influenced the outcome of the strike.
Qenos’ use of ethane for its plastic products has implications for gas supply across all of Victoria. “Without an outlet for the ethane, Esso will need to significantly curtail natural gas supply to reduce the production of these gas liquids”, Esso said in a statement. The Long Island plant processes gas from Gippsland to create ethane, propane and butane. Gippsland supplies around 40 percent of eastern Australia’s domestic gas.
The 35 plant operators and technicians at Qenos therefore potentially have significant industrial power—directly, through disrupting supply of plastic to Qenos customers and therefore hurting the company’s profits, and indirectly through their role in the chain of gas production and distribution.
The least that Qenos could do, then, is to ensure safe working conditions for its employees. Yet the workers say that night shifts have reduced and unsafe staffing levels.
The potential disruption to Victoria’s natural gas supply was cynically wielded by Qenos to terminate protected strike action. As early as 7 October, the company applied to the Fair Work Commission to end the strike under the guise that the action is “endangering life, personal safety or health, or welfare of part of the population”.
A worker who attended the Fair Work hearing said that Qenos’ lawyer acted like a “supervillain” against them, going so far as to claim that their strike action would cause deaths, while ignoring the question of the company’s responsibility in endangering its own employees. Just a month ago, the plant had a high voltage line explode while workers were on shift.
Moreover, there was no disruption to the state’s gas supply after a full week of industrial action. “AEMO [Australian Energy Market Operator] has advised that there is no current disruption to gas supply, including the use for electricity generation”, a government spokesperson told the ABC. An Esso representative told Fair Work that the company was unaware of the Qenos lockout, indicating that the strike had not yet caused disruptions in gas processing.
The Fair Work Commission nevertheless ordered that industrial action be suspended for 30 days. And the Qenos lawyer reportedly made it clear that the company would respond to any future industrial action with another lockout.
