The coronavirus pandemic has brought industrial relations policy to the centre of attention in many countries. In 2020, the Australian government convened tripartite bodies to address policy in several areas, one being for agreement-making to cover labour on ‘megaprojects’. This initiative revisited criticisms of unions for driving costs up and productivity down on these worksites, the most expensive of which had been Chevron’s Gorgon site, a liquefied natural gas project off the north-west Australian coast. Drawing on four usually siloed literatures – on industrial relations policy, megaprojects, the economic geography of resources and labour process – this article explains concerns about costs, delays and productivity in terms of project work itself. This approach leads to a different understanding of the merits of changing policy to address megaproject’s problems and productivity more broadly.

JEL Codes: J52, J58, L71

冠状病毒大流行使劳资关系政策成为许多国家关注的焦点。2020年，澳大利亚政府召集了三方机构，以解决多个领域的政策，其中一项协议旨在涵盖“大型项目”的劳动力。这项倡议重新引起了工会对这些工地成本上升和生产率下降的批评，其中最昂贵的是雪佛龙公司的高贡矿场，这是澳大利亚西北海岸的液化天然气项目。本文基于四篇通常孤立的文献-有关劳资关系政策，大型项目，资源的经济地理和劳动过程-本文从项目工作本身的角度解释了对成本，延迟和生产率的担忧。

JEL代码： J52，J58，L71