Originally published by David Marin-Guzman of The Australian Financial Review
09.04.2026
A key union has pulled the trigger on the first industrial action in the Pilbara in decades, planning overtime bans that will continue for weeks and could escalate into stoppages without progress towards a pay deal.
The Electrical Trades Union notified BHP that work bans would kick off from Thursday next week and involve up to 50 high-voltage power workers essential to powering the company’s mine sites and worker camps.
Workers will refuse overtime, call-outs and stepping up as supervisors for two weeks and will indefinitely ban mentoring new employees.
The bans mark a new stage in unions’ historic push for collective deals and represent the first industrial action to take place in the Pilbara this century, following the mining companies’ successful de-unionisation in the 1990s.
Pilbara iron ore wealth has long underpinned the profits of BHP, Rio Tinto, Fortescue and Hancock Prospecting and the mining companies have warned the prospect of re-unionisation could threaten their margins.
The region contributes billions of dollars to state and federal coffers through taxes and royalties from iron ore, Australia’s biggest export, worth roughly $115 billion annually.
ETU West Australia secretary Adam Woodage said the initial action was “measured and proportionate” but warned that it could soon get worse.
“Our members do not take industrial action lightly, but BHP’s continued refusal to bargain in good faith has left them no alternative and we have set out clear escalation points if this approach continues,” he said.
He said workers were “not asking for anything extraordinary” and “just want a genuine seat at the table when their wages and conditions are decided”.
The union had also built in safety provisions “so no worker or community member will be put at risk, and all critical safety work will be responded to”.
A BHP spokesman said that “we don’t expect any operational impacts” from the bans.
The workers complain that their pay varies by more than 30 per cent for the same work, and conditions are subject to the discretion of managers.
They are seeking to increase pay, lock in existing conditions, introduce transparent classifications, and recognise travel time, higher duties and on-call time.
BHP scores victory, fights off union Pilbara push
The notice came as the mining giant scored a victory against re-unionisation when the workplace umpire rejected the ETU’s bid for bargaining orders for dozens of critical rail workers responsible for hauling iron ore to the ports.
The Fair Work Commission’s decision is the first time it has ruled on unions’ majority support bids in the Pilbara, which are necessary for bargaining orders, and raises new hurdles to re-unionisation efforts.
The ETU said that after two years of organising and several attempts to get majority support, 58 per cent of BHP’s 50 signal technicians backed bargaining for a collective agreement based on online petitions.
BHP pushed back and said the online petitions lacked integrity as the union had not shown how it had secured the data or restricted access to it.
Deputy president Peter O’Keeffe agreed that the commission had to impose a “stringent standard” on petitions and the union bore the burden of proving the data was properly obtained, stored and protected.
This was particularly important, he said, given the Albanese government’s new laws meant that not only could an employer be forced to bargain but they could eventually be forced into an agreement through intractable bargaining laws.
Although O’Keeffe was not suggesting the ETU had manipulated the data, he said he could not be “absolutely certain” who had completed the online survey.
“In this matter, the FWC does not know how the petition data was converted into an Excel spreadsheet,” he said.
“It does not know who had access to the spreadsheet before it was sent to the FWC, nor does it know whether there were any corrections or additions to – or subtractions from – the raw data.”
Woodage said that instead of having a genuine conversation with workers, BHP “hid behind an army of highly paid lawyers and barristers”.
“The longer BHP keeps taking this approach, the angrier its workers are going to get, and the harder it will be to reach an agreement,” he said.
“We’re not going anywhere. We’ll be back, and we’ll keep pushing until workers get a fair deal.”
A BHP spokesman said, “We remain focused on working directly with our people to continue to deliver industry-leading wages and conditions.”
Unions ‘not serious’
Minerals Council CEO Tania Constable claimed the decision showed unions were “not taking their role seriously enough” to prove genuine worker support for bargaining.
“These applications impose a real productivity cost on businesses, forcing them to spend months in costly Fair Work Commission proceedings,” she said.
“Pursuing applications that clearly fall short of the required standard raises serious questions about whether this process is being misused as a union recruitment tool rather than a genuine test of employee support.”
In the past two years, unions have filed 11 majority support bids against BHP in the Pilbara, including two previous applications for signal technicians, but have so far failed to secure bargaining orders.
In most cases, the unions withdrew their applications before the commission handed down a determination, and BHP agreed to bargain in three matters. Two are still before the commission.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the High Court refused BHP’s bid to appeal landmark “same job same pay” rulings that forced it to increase the pay of 2000 labour-hire workers in Queensland by $20,000 to $30,000 a year.
The decision ends BHP’s long-running battle over the Albanese government’s laws and its argument that its mine workers were exempt service contractors rather than labour-hire staff.