Chevron not only cares about you – everything about you – but it extends that loving feeling all the way to your partner. Its global employment application form, recently handed out to prospective employees on the waterfront in Western Australia, asks in detail about your current and past health status and that of your partner.

And it warns: if the company finds out you haven’t ‘fessed up everything that has ever happened to you, or your partner, it won’t employ you or will sack you if you’re already working for them. If you’re a prospective female employee, you have to fill in an extra section, including answering a question about when your last period was!

It’s legal, Chevron emphasises over and over again (in Australia much of it isn’t), and of course it’s all voluntary. You don’t have to answer every question; it’s all confidential (they have their own health and medical department); and of course it won’t affect your employment prospects – because after all Chevron cares about you.

Workers in Australia thought differently. They were so outraged at the company’s intrusive questions that they went straight to the union, with the story making headlines across the country.

Chevron backed off within days. It was, it seems, all a big mistake. Chevron has reviewed the situation and now claims these questions on the global application form aren’t “relevant” to Australian conditions – read a strong union presence – so they’re being rewritten.

Underlying Chevron’s questionnaire, says MUA member Ian Jamieson, is an attempt to avoid future compensation claims by workers from Chevron’s pretty questionable environmental, OH&S and industrial practices. It’s all part of trying to make workers “responsible” for their own health and safety on the job and letting the bosses off the hook.

Not just on this front, workers have every reason to be suspicious of this company. Chevron is one of the original mega-oil companies and has a long history of polluting, tax evasion and trampling on human rights. It’s record recently was detailed in The true costs of Chevron: the alternative annual report.

While the company has been charged for its many infractions and ordered to pay huge fines, it has successfully appealed most.

But as the MUA has shown, Chevron is not all powerful – organised labour can beat companies like this.