Know Your Rights: Industrial Action

Industrial action is what workers do, together, to put pressure on an employer. Under the Fair Work Act, it covers:

• Stop-work action (strikes)
• Work bans (refusing to do particular duties)
• Work-to-rule (performing work only as strictly defined)
• Overtime bans

Employers also have a form of industrial action available to them: locking employees out of the workplace.

You are never required to take part in industrial action, and you can never be required not to.

The Fair Work Act draws a sharp line.

Protected industrial action is lawful. It happens during bargaining for a new enterprise agreement, after a formal process. If it is protected, you are shielded from most legal consequences, your employer cannot sue you for losses caused by the action, and you cannot be sacked for taking part.

Unprotected industrial action does not carry those protections. Penalties can apply, and individuals and unions can be ordered to stop.

The short version: if you want the law on your side, the action has to be protected, and that means following the process.

Protected action is only available in one situation: when your workplace is bargaining for a new enterprise agreement. Specifically:

• The nominal expiry date of any existing enterprise agreement has passed (you cannot take protected action before then), and
• Bargaining for a new agreement has started, and
• The parties have been genuinely trying to reach agreement.

You cannot take protected action over a grievance, a dispute, or general workplace conditions outside a bargaining cycle. For those, different tools apply, and UAW can help you identify them.

1. Bargaining begins for a new enterprise agreement. UAW acts as bargaining representative for its members at the workplace.
2. UAW applies to the Fair Work Commission for a protected action ballot order.
3. A secret ballot of affected employees is held. If a majority vote yes, action is authorised.
4. Conciliation conference. The bargaining representative who applied for the ballot must attend a compulsory conciliation conference during the ballot period. Missing this conference makes any subsequent action unprotected.
5. Written notice of the action is given to the employer at least three working days before it starts (or 120 hours for multi-enterprise agreements).
6. Action proceeds as authorised by the ballot.

• Civil liability. Your employer cannot sue you for losses caused by protected action.
• Adverse action. Your employer cannot sack you, demote you, cut your hours, or otherwise penalise you for taking part in protected action, for being a member of a union, or for exercising workplace rights.
• Discrimination. You are also protected if you choose not to take part.

Breaches of these protections carry significant maximum penalties per breach, with higher maxima for serious contraventions. The amounts are indexed and change over time, so UAW will confirm the current maximum.

During protected industrial action your employer must not pay you for the period of the action. Proportional rules apply to partial work bans.

For some unprotected action a minimum deduction (commonly four hours) can apply. The rules here are technical, so UAW will advise members on the specifics before any action.

Industrial action costs something. Unions exist in part to spread that cost across the membership.

Yes. The Fair Work Commission can suspend or terminate protected industrial action if it would endanger public health or safety, cause significant damage to the economy, or is causing significant economic harm to the parties. The Minister for Employment also has emergency powers. These powers are used rarely, but they exist.

Industrial action in Australia is older than the Fair Work Act and wider than it. The NSW Builders Labourers Federation's Green Bans (1971 to 1975) halted billions of dollars of development and saved large parts of Sydney's built environment. Construction workers refused to build what the community did not want built. They did so collectively, at cost, and changed the country.

The Fair Work Act sets out the legal pathway for industrial action today. What makes action work is the same thing that made the Green Bans work: numbers, discipline, and collective nerve.

Contact UAW before you do anything. As your registered union, UAW has the legal standing to be your bargaining representative, apply for ballots, and guide you through the process lawfully.

Get in touch with UAW.

This fact sheet summarises the Fair Work Act 2009 as at June 2026. The law changes. Check with UAW or the Fair Work Commission for current advice on your situation.

• Fair Work Ombudsman industrial action fact sheet: fairwork.gov.au
• Fair Work Commission protected action ballot information: fwc.gov.au
• Fair Work Infoline: 13 13 94

This fact sheet is general information, not legal advice. If you are facing a specific situation at work, contact UAW directly.