Mining & Energy Union members will begin protected industrial action at the Kogan Creek power station this Thursday, 21 September 2023.
The union representing the majority of workers at the Kogan Creek power station attended the Fair Work Commission last Tuesday.
Members were granted orders to take protected industrial action after negotiations continued with CS Energy yesterday with no direction from the state government on the impact of the Queensland Energy Workers’ Charter on enterprise bargaining under the future energy plan.
The Mining & Energy Union (MEU) — which represents operators, fitters, electricians, and power workers at the highly efficient ‘supercritical’ power station, one of the newest, and biggest on the national grid — said that members have been left with little choice.
Industrial action will compound the current critical shortage of energy security due to work stoppages at several of the units at Callide Power station and at other plants.
This may lead to widespread power disruptions in Queensland, as the Kogan power station near Chinchilla supplies 10 per cent of Queensland’s power and much of northern New South Wales.
The current issue is CS Energy’s inability to abide by the freshly inked Queensland Energy Workers’ Charter and the lack of direction from the government to ensure that workers at coal fired power stations are provided job security, career development to new technologies, as well as retention and attraction initiatives as the Queensland energy plan unravels.
There are over 120 workers at Kogan Creek power station and another 80 at the Kogan mine which supplies coal to the facility, not to mention the local community support workers.
These jobs are essential to nearby Chinchilla and other local communities.
Casual employees at Kogan are also reportedly earning less money than permanent employees.
MEU members at Kogan want guarantees they won’t be replaced by contractors and request for fair distribution of attraction and retention provisions in the EA so the Kogan plant can continue to operate safely and efficiently.
MEU Queensland District Vice-President Shane Brunker says the situation has the capacity to escalate quickly and affect power generation across Queensland.
“CS Energy need direction from government at the negotiating table to finish these negotiations otherwise there will be dire consequences for energy security running into the peak period of summer power generation in this state.
“We start negotiations with CS Energy for the Callide replacement EA in September and Tarong in January 2024, so our membership across the state are aware this EA and future agreements are the precedent for the industry and the future for their industry and communities.
“The state government needs to decide if the Queensland Energy Workers’ Charter means something, or if it’s not worth the paper it’s written on,” said Brunker.
Kogan Creek Power Station was commissioned in 2007 and contains the largest single generating unit in Australia — generating up to 750 megawatts of baseload electricity, which is enough to power one million Australian homes.