February 27, 2025
Rio Tinto workers in the Pilbara are making their voices heard this month, launching a Majority Support Petition to initiate bargaining at the mining giant’s iron ore operations around Paraburdoo.
If successful, this would be the first Majority Support Determination at a major Pilbara iron ore mine in over two decades.
The Majority Support Petition is an initiative of the Western Mine Workers Alliance, a joint venture of the Mining and Energy Union and the Australian Workers Union.
The Alliance is dedicated to rebuilding worker power in the Pilbara after two decades of aggressive deunionisation, which has resulted in inconsistent standards and conditions, without many of the protections of the east coast coal industry.
MEU iron ore train drivers have been leading the wave of reunionisation throughout the Pilbara, securing substantially improved agreements at both Rio Tinto and BHP. The action surrounding those campaigns has inspired new interest in the region for bargaining for a better deal.
WMWA Coordinator Shane Roulstone says the petition has been a long time in the making.
“When we set up the Alliance just over a decade ago, so much of our efforts were dedicated to debunking misinformation from the companies about unions and showing them that we don’t bite.
“Many of the workers we encountered had never worked on a site with a union presence or spoken to an organiser.
“Our members should be extremely proud that we’ve come this far, and that it looks like we now have strong majority of Rio workers behind us.”
Rio’s Paraburdoo operations are split evenly between residential and FIFO workers, with both segments receiving inadequate conditions. FIFO workers experience long waits at Paraburdoo’s small, unairconditioned airport following the end of a swing, while residential workers face extortionate utility bills in their company-owned housing.
Additionally, workers are seeking guaranteed annual pay increases to keep up with rising cost of living, especially in the remote communities of the Pilbara. They are also demanding pay equity and fair and detailed classification to normalise conditions and career progression in an industry previously dominated by individual contracts.
The Petition’s early success is already making waves among Rio Tinto management. Just one day after the Petition was launched, the company came out with a new compensation policy for flight delays, a key claim of Rio’s Paraburdoo workers.
Of course, the policy falls well short of the WMWA’s claim for $200 if a flight is delayed for over two hours, and $100 for each hour thereafter, but it demonstrates Rio’s recognition that Pilbara workers are finally standing up and demanding a fairer go. The Rio Majority Support Petition comes as the WMWA is bargaining with BHP for an agreement covering their massive South Flank and Area C operations in the Pilbara. The WMWA was able to bypass the majority support process thanks to new laws introduced by the Albanese Labor government, which allow unions to trigger enterprise agreement negotiations within five years of an agreements nominal expiry date.
See related article – Western mineworkers taming the wild west
