"I couldn't tell you at the moment whether we'll be taking any action, I mean, it's up to our members how they vote [but] we're confident they're going to vote yes," he said.

"They are in the process of voting as we speak and that won't be finalised until early next week," he told Radio 6PR.

"They haven't come to the table with what we've asked for," he said.

Mr Dawson said the union had been trying to negotiate with Zip Airport Services, a Shell company, for five months before the old contract expired, holding 12 meetings, but things had gone backwards.

"Once that ballot's done, if our members vote to take protective action any time after that they're free to take protected action as long as it's done legally and under the rules of the law, so yes, they could take it any time after that.

"The company are the ones that have driven us down the path of protected action. We're not planning to take any action on grand final weekend; it's a matter of when this agreement expired and the negotiations, the time it's taken to try and get to an outcome; it's not taken directly because there's a grand final on in a couple of weeks.

"This company put money on the table, put three per cent on the table during the negotiations and then took that off the table and put 1.2 per cent back on the table, and want to take conditions off them that they already, have so you can understand the anger of our members out there.

"Both parties, ourselves included, would like to see negotiations finalised and we can move on.

"So we'd like to think that the company would see common sense and come to the table with a reasonable offer."