In its ruling handed down on Wednesday, the Fair Work Commission ordered contractor Kentz Australia to pay over $1 million to former electrical workers on the Inpex Ichthys LNG project in the Northern Territory.

Kentz Australia had dismissed 150 workers as they began their one week of rest and recreation. That unpaid leave time was then included as part of the required notice period, reducing the workers’ total termination pay out.

The FWC ruled that notice of termination of employment could not run concurrently with a period of leave.

The Electrical Trades Union seized upon the ruling’s precedent to extend a challenge to projects across the resource sector while the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union said it sent letters to every project.

“This decision by the FWC has put resource companies and their contractors on notice that they cannot use the unique vulnerabilities of a FIFO workforce to attack basic employment rights. The ETU is committed to bringing this practice to an end” said ETU national legal officer Michael Wright.

However according to Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA CEO Deidre Willmott, the ETU’s complaint was “a case of the union fomenting trouble at one workplace at the expense of Australia’s reputation as a place to do business.”

“The [FWC’s] decision will have significant ramifications for industry,” Willmott said.

Under wage laws claims can date back six years, with the potential for back-pay to be claimed by thousands of workers. Just before Christmas last year Chevron made 1200 workers on its Gorgon project redundant, including around 530 electrical sub-contractors.

“The ETU has launched a review of the industry and we have already identified more than 3,000 FIFO workers that have been denied more than $10 million of entitlements in the same way,” Wright said on Thursday.

Kentz Australia has 21 days to appeal the FWC decision.