Nearly 600 workers at the Loy Yang power plant in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley have had their workplace agreement ripped up by the Fair Work Commission. In a decision issued on 12 January, the Commission sided with their employer, Australian energy giant AGL, to terminate the enterprise agreement that set their wages and conditions.

Legally, the company is now entitled to pay its workers award wages. According to the CFMEU’s submissions to the Commission, undisputed by AGL, the award minimums are at least 30 percent lower than the wage rates under the agreement. Some, more experienced workers, face a pay cut of $100,000 – a 65 percent drop.

Other conditions that will be stripped include shift ratios. Under the now terminated agreement, the Loy Yang plant has the highest ratio of workers per shift of any AGL power plant. This staffing standard had been hard won by the union workforce that runs the power plant that supplies 30 percent of Victoria’s electricity.

AGL and its workforce have been locked in a battle over the terms of a new enterprise agreement for 18 months. The company wants any new agreement to scrap protections about job security and staff numbers. The decision to terminate the existing agreement – before a new deal is reached – is a major boost to the company’s bargaining position. AGL’s position has been furthered strengthened by another Commission decision, handed down a week later, to ban workers at Loy Yang taking industrial action.

The Loy Yang case is just the latest in a rash of Fair Work decisions to terminate enterprise agreements in the middle of bargaining. Increasingly, bosses and the Commission are treating these agreements as worth the paper they are written on, only as long as they help employers hold back workers’ share of income.