In its final decision to stop all industrial action at the island yesterday, the Fair Work Commission said it was not disputed that employees who were not members of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union were involved.

While there is a reported estimate that 2000 people were involved in the industrial action against LNG plant-building contractor Bechtel on Thursday last week, FWC said more than 1700 did not work on the LNG projects on this day.

It revealed that more than 1200 employees did not attend on Friday, the second day of the strike which has continued into this week.

These numbers are beyond the union representation at the three LNG projects, with only 148 of its members eligible to vote for the Bechtel-related protected industrial action ballot they approved in July.

While FWC did not find that the CFMEU organised the industrial action for non-members, it did comment that the action it took, including picketing, was aimed at “dissuading other workers to attend work”.

The numbers involved in the strike declined to more than 700 yesterday according to the Australian Financial Review this morning.

Although FWC has ruled that the CFMEU-organised industrial action was not protected, primarily due to failings in how it notified Bechtel, it has seemingly given clearance for looming protected action.

In its final decision yesterday FWC said the union’s notice to take an indefinite work stoppage starting from 12:01am tomorrow morning did “not suffer from the same deficiencies as the earlier notices”.

However, Bechtel also made an application to the Federal Court of Australia yesterday afternoon.

“We asked for an injunction against the CFMEU and 72 individual CFMEU and other union members, to stop the industrial action,” the engineering giant said.

While Bechtel found it “very disturbing” that union officials claimed the industrial action was protected yesterday despite an interim FWC decision to the contrary, it said its focus this week was the secret ballot over its revised enterprise agreement.

Final votes are expected by midnight on Thursday, with Bechtel offering a range of financial incentives and other benefits.

However, its introduction of a three-and-one roster – on which the union action is based – was not scheduled until the second half of 2017, which has not satisfied the CFMEU.

With the existing EA having expired in June, the revised one reportedly needs 50% approval plus one vote from 8000 eligible employees to pass.

Two weeks ago BG Group warned that industrial action could threaten the Queensland Curtis LNG project’s schedule of first LNG in late 2014.