CBI Construction Pty Ltd v Abbott

CBI Construction Pty Ltd applied to the Federal Court of Australia for an injunction to restrain certain employees from refusing to work on specified packages of the North West Shelf LNG Phase 5 Expansion Project. The employees, who were initially part of a larger workforce, demanded termination of their employment, payment of redundancy entitlements taxed at concessional rates, and immediate reemployment under new contracts for the S6 and VRL packages. They argued that the S6 and VRL work did not form part of the Phase V Project and sought to enforce their demands through their union representatives. The legal issues the Court had to decide included whether the S6 and VRL work constituted part of the Phase V Project and whether the employees' demands would result in a breach of federal taxation laws. The applicant argued that the S6 and VRL work was part of the Phase V Project and that rehiring the employees under new contracts would breach taxation laws as the redundancy would not be bona fide. The Court found that the S6 and VRL work was part of the Phase V Project and that rehiring the employees would breach taxation laws. Consequently, the Court granted the application and issued an order restraining the respondents from failing to attend for work or failing to perform work in the manner customarily performed for the applicant.

The final orders included restraining the respondents from refusing to work on the specified packages, permitting alternative methods of serving the order on the respondents, taking the application and notice of motion to have been served under certain conditions, abridging the time for service of the originating documents, granting liberty to the applicant to apply to discharge or vary the order, adjourning the directions hearing, and reserving the costs of and incidental to the interlocutory application.