Crane workers strike for better pay at Australia’s biggest wind project

Crane operators at one of Australia’s biggest wind farms have gone on strike, demanding better pay and conditions at the beleaguered Golden Plains project in Victoria, according to union officials.

Local employees of Danish crane operator BMS began a work stoppage across both stages of the project on Thursday, with four-hour strikes ramping up to six hours a day over the weekend, then eight hours from Monday, until an enterprise bargaining agreement is struck.

The Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CMFEU) says it’s been in talks with BMS since December.

The union is asking for an agreement underpinned by the mobile crane award, which requires minimum hour rates for different levels of experience between $27 and $33 and allowances for items such as pile driving, times when more than one crane is used, and travel and workwear subsidies. 

The CFMEU is also asking for dad and partner pay to be included in the Golden Plains agreement, and an inclement weather provision, which the award rules out unless the company tells staff to stop working. 

Golden Plains is 85 per cent owned by TagEnergy and 15 per cent by Ingka Investments and will total 1,330 MW over two stages, making it the biggest in the country once complete. Construction at the project is being led by Danish giant Vestas, which is also providing the turbines.

The strike is the latest event to slow work on the $4 billion project.

In September last year, small turbine blade parts fell from turbines at the 756 MW stage one ‘East’ section of the project. In November, a man was killed at the project’s site after being crushed by a turbine blade.

The ensuing investigation continues but at the time Australian Workers Union (AWU) lead construction organiser Joel Archer suggested the incident was caused by a pin that hadn’t been properly inserted in one of the scaffolding towers holding up the blade.