Given we have an agreement in place we cannot put a Greenfield agreement in place, that can only occur in a location where there are no employees in place which is clearly not our current situation.
Not anymore.
"The Full Bench of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission has opened the way for entering into greenfield agreements for new projects. In Brunel Technical Services Offshore Pty Ltd Bayu-Darwin Pipeline Agreement 2004 (PR950406), the Full Bench held that it is sufficient that a new business constitutes a new project even though the nature of the project involves the same line of employer’s business.
"In this case, Brunel Technical Services and Minesite Catering entered into separate greenfield agreements with a number of unions to apply to the construction of the Bayu-Darwin gas pipeline which will deliver gas from the gasfields near East Timor. The AWU appealed the decision of the Commission to approve the greenfield agreements on the basis that the projects did not constitute new businesses for Brunel or Minesite.
"Critical to the Full Bench’s decision was that the definition of “single business” extended to “a business, project or undertaking that is carried on by an employer”. The Commission found that even if the agreement applied to a kind of business in respect of which the employer was already involved, it could still be a new business where the employer was involved in a new “project”.
There might be existing engineering employees at JHAS, but the Tiger contract could be labelled a new project and a greenfields agreement, union or employer, could be put in place.
Then the fun begins when you guys find out if it is worth transferring to the new project -- with a new employment contract!!