Labour Agreement in Place at Hibernia’s Offshore Platform

North American’s offshore oil and gas industry now has its second collective agreement in place after a Newfoundland-Labrador provincial arbitrator issued a 38-month labour contract between employers on the Hibernia platform and the Communications, Energy, Paperworkers (CEP) Union of Canada. Some 450 workers at Hibernia, whose managing company is US supermajor ExxonMobil, will receive yearly wage increases, plus backpay to 1 July 2004 totalling, on average, C$9,168.

CEP won a guarantee that workplace certification of the platform and terms of the agreement apply to all successor companies or oil-service firms at Hibernia. The interest arbitration award lays out a three-week on, three-week off work rotation schedule. That includes 84 paid hours each workweek, divided into seven 12-hour days while on the platform.

Hibernia workers were the first offshore oil workers anywhere in North America to organise a union, voting for the CEP in 2001. Workers at the Terra Nova platform, an oil rig also in the North Atlantic that is managed by Petro-Canada, voted for CEP representation in 2003 and the 120 workers there received a first collective agreement through an interest arbitration award issued on 30 September 2005. Legislation in several Canadian provinces provides for such a process in achieving first collective agreements, and also prohibits strikes or lockouts during that period.