Tiwai Point smelter hit by first strike action in years as 185 workers walk off after Rio Tinto talks stall
About 185 workers at New Zealand’s only aluminium smelter will walk off the job four times next week, in the first significant industrial action at Tiwai Point in years and a sharp escalation of a wage dispute that has dragged on for more than two and a half years.
E tū members at Rio Tinto’s New Zealand Aluminium Smelter at Bluff have voted to take strike action on Monday 4 May, then again on 6, 8 and 10 May, after collective agreement negotiations broke down. The dispute has been running since 2024 without a settlement, and the union says the company has refused to land an agreement that recognises the work being done at one of the country’s most strategically important industrial sites.
E tū director Mat Danaher told RNZ the long delay was a choice rather than an oversight. “We believe this failure to agree is a deliberate anti-union tactic,” he said. “They do not want to have a collective employment agreement in place.” Danaher pointed to Rio Tinto’s global profit numbers as proof the company can afford to settle, noting the parent group “reported underlying EBITDA of US$25.4 billion (NZ$43bn) and profit after tax of US$10bn (NZ$17bn) for 2025”. His pitch to the public is straightforward. “The workers who keep Tiwai running deserve a fair share of that success,” he said.
Workers themselves have been the public face of the campaign. Tiwai delegate and production worker Dee said staff had not asked for anything outside the norm. “We’re not being unreasonable. What we want is decent work. We want an agreement that recognises the job we do, the conditions we work under, and the contribution we make,” she said in comments published by Scoop.
Rio Tinto, through its NZAS arm, has rejected the characterisation. A spokesperson said the company would keep talking and was prepared to head back into mediation later in the month. “We will continue to engage with the union, and all our staff, in good faith and have confirmed we will recommence mediation on 20 May,” they said. “In a tough economic environment for many businesses, we’re proud to continue to offer our team members market leading benefits.” NZAS said the terms it had offered the union were competitive.
The action is being taken by the roughly 185 E tū members covered by the collective agreement at the Bluff site, out of a wider workforce of about a thousand. The union has not detailed exactly how each of the four strike days will be structured, although the four named dates are the public face of what could escalate further if the 20 May mediation fails to produce a deal.
The timing is awkward for Rio Tinto. The company secured the long-term future of Tiwai Point in early 2024 with a 20-year electricity arrangement that anchors the smelter at Bluff until at least 2044, after years of speculation about closure and several short-term lifelines from successive governments. That deal locked in concessional power pricing in exchange for the smelter staying open and is the underpinning that allows the plant to keep operating in a global aluminium market that has been volatile for most of the decade. The settlement was sold publicly as a major regional win, which makes a four-day strike sequence in the same plant a politically uncomfortable look for everyone involved.
It also means the smelter has unusual leverage in any pay dispute. Tiwai is one of the country’s largest single export earners, consumes around 13 percent of New Zealand’s electricity output, and supports thousands of indirect jobs across Southland and Otago through suppliers, contractors, transport firms and downstream services. Industrial action at any scale on site is consequential not just for the workforce but for the regional economy, which is already nervous after the announced closure of the Talley’s Westport fish plant up the coast and continuing talk of further Air New Zealand regional flight cuts.
What the four strike days actually do to production will depend on how Rio Tinto staffs around the gap and whether other workforce groups join in if the dispute hardens. Aluminium smelting cannot easily be turned on and off because the molten potlines need to keep running, so a series of one-day strikes is generally more about pressure than physical disruption to output. The real test of resolve is the 20 May mediation. If that fails, the union has said it is prepared to escalate, and the political stakes will rise quickly given the Beehive has spent the past three years selling Tiwai’s continued operation as a regional success story.
The dispute also lands at a sensitive moment for Rio Tinto’s New Zealand reputation. The company benefits from a sweetheart power deal designed to keep a major industrial employer in the country, and the union has built its public case around the gap between that arrangement, Rio Tinto’s tens of billions of dollars in global profit, and the offer it has put in front of Bluff workers. How that argument plays in Wellington and around the rest of Southland over the next ten days will probably matter as much as anything said inside the mediation room.
Are you watching the Tiwai dispute up close, or working in a Southland industry that depends on the smelter? Drop a comment below and tell us what you think. Is Rio Tinto bargaining in good faith?