Kingaroy Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Rod Steele is angry that a union is challenging the restart of the two mothballed power generating units at Tarong.
On Tuesday, the Electrical Trades Union announced that it was seeking injunctions and penalties in the Federal Court against Stanwell, claiming the corporation had failed to consult with employees about the decision to close the gas-fired Swanbank E power station or to re-start the Tarong units.
Mr Steele said the union action could have flow-on effects to all small businesses across the South Burnett.
“This foolish action is going to be detrimental to the South Burnett,” Mr Steele said.
“There will be a significant flow-on effect downstream to all small business in this region.”
Mr Steele said he found the union’s actions “extremely frustrating” – especially when retail and manufacturing industries across Australia were doing it hard.
“Business is hard enough without the unions and the Labor Party making it even harder to get the country running to an acceptable level,” he said.
He said unions and the Labor Party were putting impediments in the way of business, and the results of this could be seen at General Motors Holden, Ford, Toyota and SPC.
“I am frustrated that the Labor Party and unions don’t understand that what they are doing is negative and against employment, and against helping the economy grow and be competitive,” Mr Steele said.
“The ETU and the Labor Party say that they represent workers and the Australian community at large but you can see their actions are disadvantaging everyone.”
Mr Steel said the ETU’s actions were “immoral and nasty”.
“Stanwell have all the information at hand. They understand the electricity market,” he said.
“The unions are saying they know better than Stanwell. I think that is bizarre.”
Mr Steele said the unions were showing a lack of accountability and did not understand the effect their actions were having on business.
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