BHP Strike Extended: What Happens to Your Super and Site Insurance While You're Off the Roster

Right now there's a fair few blokes and a growing number of women sitting on the couch at home instead of a swing, waiting to see how long this BHP strike drags on. The pay stops, everyone knows that bit. What doesn't get talked about enough is what's happening in the background to your super and your insurance while you're off the roster and not clocking a single hour. It's not automatically frozen in time. Some of it keeps ticking along, some of it stops dead, and the difference matters more the longer this thing runs.

Super Contributions Stop the Moment Your Pay Does

Employer super guarantee (SG) contributions are calculated on your ordinary time earnings, currently 11.5% for the 2024/25 financial year, rising to 12% from 1 July 2025. The key word there is earnings. If you're not being paid because you're on strike, there's no ordinary time earnings for that period, which means no SG contribution accrues. Simple as that. BHP isn't obligated to keep tipping money into your super fund for weeks you didn't work and weren't paid for.

Run your own numbers so you know what's actually at stake. If you're on $150,000 base, that's roughly $17,250 a year in super, or about $1,437 a month. Four weeks off the tools without pay costs you somewhere around $1,325 in super that simply never gets contributed. It's not sitting in limbo waiting to be topped up later. It's gone, unless you choose to make a personal contribution to cover the gap, which you can do if you want to keep your balance on track (and potentially claim a tax deduction for it, worth a chat to your accountant if the strike runs long).

This is different to being stood down where an employer keeps some entitlements ticking, or to paid leave where SG still applies. Strike action without pay is closer to unpaid leave in the eyes of your super fund, and that has knock-on effects beyond just the missing contribution.

Income Protection: It Depends Where Your Premium Comes From

This is the bit that catches people out, because there are two very different setups and most workers don't know which one they've got.

• Default cover inside your super fund: if your income protection or TPD cover sits inside your super account (this is the most common setup for FIFO workers, whether that's a fund like AustralianSuper, Hostplus, Mine Super or whatever's on your payslip), the premium is usually deducted straight from your super balance, not from your take-home pay. That means the premium keeps getting paid even during the strike, as long as there's enough balance sitting in the account to cover it. Your cover generally keeps running.
• Retail policy paid via bank direct debit: if you've got a standalone income protection policy through an insurer like TAL, MLC or Zurich that comes out of your bank account each month rather than your pay, that keeps going too, provided you've got the funds to cover the direct debit. The risk here isn't the strike itself, it's whether your household cash flow can still cover that premium while your regular pay isn't landing.

Where it gets messy is if your cover is technically inside super but your fund treats an extended period of zero contributions as a trigger to review or lapse the policy. Some funds only maintain cover if your account balance can absorb the premiums, and if the balance runs low because there's nothing new coming in, insurance can be cancelled to protect the account from going to zero. This is exactly the scenario an extended strike creates: no new contributions, premiums quietly eating into whatever balance is already there.

The Inactivity Rule You Need to Know About

Under the Putting Members' Interests First and Protecting Your Super reforms, super funds are required to cancel insurance cover on accounts that have been inactive (meaning no contributions received) for 16 months, unless you've specifically opted to keep the cover. A few weeks or even a few months of strike action won't get you anywhere near that 16 month mark on its own. But if this strike drags into month three or four, and you've had other gaps in contributions this year from R&R stretches, previous stand downs or job changes, it's worth checking where you actually sit against that clock. It adds up faster than people expect.

Don't assume "it's only been a few weeks" means you're in the clear. Ask your fund directly what your inactivity clock currently reads, not what you think it reads.

What to Actually Check With Your Fund This Week

Don't wait until the strike is over to find out your cover lapsed in week six. Get on the phone or into the member portal now and ask these specific questions:

• Has my account received a contribution in the last 16 months, and if not, how close am I to the insurance cancellation trigger?
• Are my insurance premiums being deducted from my account balance right now, and what's my current balance versus the ongoing premium cost?
• Does the fund have a "continuation of cover" provision for members on approved unpaid leave or involved in industrial action, and do I need to apply for it in writing?
• If my cover lapses, what does reinstatement involve? Some funds require full underwriting again, meaning health questions and possible loading or exclusions, which is a different situation to just having cover automatically resume.

Get the answers in writing, an email from the fund is worth ten times more than a verbal answer from a call centre if you ever need to make a claim down the track.

Check the PDS on Your Income Protection Policy Too

Whether your income protection sits in super or is a retail policy, go back and read the actual product disclosure statement, specifically the definition of "actively at work." Plenty of income protection policies require you to be actively at work, meaning performing your normal duties, at the time any injury or illness occurs for a claim to be valid. If you're off site on strike and something happens to you during that period, unrelated to work, you need to know whether your policy still responds or whether it treats strike action differently to approved leave or a rostered break.

This isn't scaremongering, it's just the sort of detail that's buried on page 34 of a PDS that nobody reads until they need to make a claim. A ten minute phone call to your insurer now, asking them directly "does my cover still apply if I'm off work due to industrial action," gets you a definitive answer instead of a guess.

What Doesn't Stop Regardless of the Strike

A few things worth knowing that keep running no matter what:

• Any personal (voluntary) super contributions you've set up yourself, whether salary sacrifice or after-tax, obviously stop too if there's no pay to sacrifice from, but if you contribute manually from savings you can keep that going if you choose to.
• Existing insurance claims already in progress aren't affected by the strike. If you were already receiving an income protection payout before the strike started, that continues under the terms already agreed.
• Your super balance itself doesn't go backwards from the strike (aside from investment market movement, which is unrelated). It just stops growing from new contributions for that period.

Practical Steps Before This Runs Any Longer

• Log into your super fund account and check the date of your last contribution and your current balance against ongoing insurance premiums.
• Call the fund and specifically ask about continuation of cover during unpaid industrial action, get the answer emailed to you.
• Pull out your income protection PDS (or ask your insurer to send it) and check the "actively at work" clause.
• If you've got a mortgage broker or financial adviser, flag the strike with them now rather than after a missed payment, particularly if premiums are coming out of a bank account that's about to see reduced deposits.
• Talk to your union delegate about whether any strike fund or hardship payment is available, and whether accepting it has any impact on your employment status for super purposes.

None of this changes how long the strike goes for, that's above your pay grade and mine. But the blokes who come out the other side of an extended dispute without a nasty surprise on their super statement or a knocked-back insurance claim are the ones who rang their fund in week two, not the ones who assumed it would all sort itself out by the time they were back on the bus to camp.