AEMO remains committed to reaching an enterprise agreement that provides strong and certain wage growth, together with a range of employee benefits that are externally benchmarked, sustainable for the organisation and considerate of cost to industry and consumers.
The Professionals Australia union has notified AEMO that eligible members, which account for around 5% of employees, may undertake a further seven protected industrial actions from 9.00am on Tuesday 13 October; this is in addition to six actions that have been underway since 30 September.
Unlike the initial actions, which primarily focus on meetings, communications and administrative processes, the additional actions relate more directly to operational, technology and industry-facing activities, including network outage processing, participant support, customer connection enquiries and software change management.
AEMO will continue to assess the impacts of notified actions and, where appropriate, seek regulatory or legal remedies available under the Fair Work Act to address risks to public health and safety, or the economy.
As a not-for-profit market body, AEMO’s costs are ultimately borne by consumers. Advocating for disruption across the energy sector and higher costs or risk to consumers should be avoided.
The Australian Services Union has commenced a Protected Action Ballot Order process with the Fair Work Commission. Eligible ASU members will now vote on whether to authorise protected industrial action. Should any action be approved, AEMO will receive advance notice before it can commence.
AEMO has undertaken extensive planning and is implementing mitigation and contingency arrangements to support reliable market and system operations.