February 08, 201212:00AM
ELECTRICIANS working on Bass Strait oil and gas platforms have won a 15 per cent pay rise, making them among the nation's best-paid tradesmen.
The Esso offshore sparkies earn between $220,000 and $230,000 a year, and the new three-year deal will see some of the elite blue-collar workers earn more than $260,000 annually by 2015. Employed on fly-in, fly-out rosters, the estimated 350 employees work seven consecutive 12-hour shifts, living on the platforms for eight nights before they return to the mainland for a week off.
Critical to their high pay is that they hold dual trades in electrical and instrumentation, to perform crucial maintenance work on rigs.
During the lengthy negotiations, the Electrical Trades Union successfully resisted for the time being a push by Esso to move to a 14-day on, 14-day off roster. However, prior to finalising the deal the union agreed to trial an annualised pay system designed to reduce the amount of overtime.
Prior to the trial, some employees were working significant amounts of overtime, pushing their annual remuneration up to $260,000.
Under the trial, "non-standard" overtime hours are capped and workers received an annual allowance of about $11,000 in lieu of non-standard overtime and associated penalty payments.
Living away from home payments have been annualised into one $5544 allowance while other allowances are paid in exchange for meeting efficiencies.
Union organiser Peter Mooney said the workers had not made any trade-offs in exchange for the three annual 5 per cent pay rises.
Cont...