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Member Update: July 1, 2022
Dear Members,
Things are moving along constructively across a number of Enterprise Agreement negotiations with more set to kick off.
Newcastle members were sent a bulletin regarding their EA with KDH, following an in-principle agreement reached last Wednesday. While the company has sent back their offer, we have decided to delay the vote until the Industrial Officer involved, Lizanne Bennett, has had a chance to go over it properly. Lizanne is currently recovering from major surgery and is scheduled to return on July 11th, whereby we estimate it will take her approximately one week to go over the offer. Note that this does not affect anything, it just means that it will take a little longer to take it to a vote. We appreciate your patience and will work on progressing this as soon as Lizanne returns healthy and well.
In Region 6, TSA are continuing to run shift modelling as requested by the RTBU. Once this has been fully completed, we'll be able to get into exactly what shape rosters and shifts will look like and have more detail to present to members. The next bargaining meeting is scheduled for the 7th July to go over the data that has been generated so far.
In Region 7, we're met with Busways to clarify and discuss items and clauses. One important factor is that busways has not costed some of the measures they have taken. For example, how much would they save by reducing this or that entitlement. When we have that figure, we can look at how to reinvest into those items that members have identified as priorities. We appreciate your ongoing patience as we conduct due diligence towards a fair EA for members, as always, our members will have the final say.
For CMET Canberra members, bargaining is set to kick off shortly, and a full bulletin will be sent to members before negotiations begin.
We stand in solidarity with the RTBU Locomotive Division, who began industrial action early this week after their concerns for transport safety were dismissed once again by the NSW Government and Transport for NSW. Public transport is a public good, and safety takes precedence in an industry that is responsible for transporting people - human beings with places to go and lives to live - who rely on an elected state government to keep them safe on a state-owned service.
We hope that you continue to stay safe and well.
CMET Log of Claims
Bargaining is set to kick off after members endorsed the compiled Log of Claims last week.
CMET has complied the Log of Claims for both the RTBU and ETU which will be negotiating one Agreement. The ETU is pushing for a separate Agreement to cover maintenance staff and we absolutely support them in fighting for what their members want.
Parties are currently trying to lock in a date in the next 2-3 weeks for a full day of bargaining to kick things off.
A reminder that members can expect to see a CFMEU organiser in your workplace on our behalf I the next week or so. They won’t be doing the bargaining, but are there to sign up new members, answer queries, and support the local delegate with local knowledge.
Once we have a date locked in, we’ll send a bulletin to members to outline the process going forward.
Newcastle EA - In-principle agreement reached
The Newcastle EA was taken to members to vote on after we reached an in-principle agreement with KDH last Wednesday.
The RTBU was successful in its request for a 7 per cent increase over two years, effective from November 2022 and November 2023. Drivers will also be back-paid a three percent rise from November 2021.
An extra ten conditions were also inserted into the Enterprise Agreement without any trade off for members.
Members were sent a bulletin yesterday regarding KDH's offer. It's important to go over the offer with a fine-toothed comb, so the Industrial Officer involved in negotiations, Lizanne Bennett, will be running through it with a critical eye.
However, Lizanne is currently recovering from major surgery and is scheduled to return on July 11th. When she does, we estimate it will take her about one week to go over the offer. At the time of writing, the union believes this process will be complete by the week ending on 15th July.
It's important to note that this does not negatively impact anything. It just means it will take a little bit longer to put the offer up to a vote, but the benefit of having Lizanne examine it means that we can ensure additional conditions have been included and no existing conditions have been altered.
We appreciate your patience as we await Lizanne's healthy return.
Region 8 Pay Issues
After 8 months of pay issues, members at Keolis Downer voted this week on directing the union to push for an independent payroll audit.
This followed resolutions from each of the 3 depots pushing for the same, but audits often reveal as much, if not more, bad than good. For this reason, a vote of all members was decided on to allow for people, such as PM drivers, who are not able to regularly attend depot meetings to have a say. This ran across Wednesday and Thursday this week and was closed today. A bulletin and an SMS with the link was sent to members.
The result of the poll is that members, overwhelmingly, DO want an external audit to be done, understanding that it may reveal more overpayments than underpayments. This highlights the desire of employees to be able to trust their pay is correct. The stress being generated by these ongoing issues is unacceptable.
This still doesn’t stop the ongoing issues, which we’d expect an experienced multinational company with experience in our Award and conditions via Newcastle, to manage without problems. A meeting has been scheduled with KDNB and Downer management and the RTBU to go through all the issues individually. This group will meet every week afterwards until the issues are resolved.
The union has also requested a ticketing system be set up for employees to better track the queries and to lend the process of inquiring into each report some transparency. KDNB has agreed and is in the process of sorting that system out.
Having sat down with the company and gone through how certain payments should be made and for there STILL to be widespread ongoing issues of both over and underpayments, we need the company to take some responsibility and do their job.
While there are limits to what the union can do (we don’t run the business), we are involving ourselves as much as possible at every level to help KDNB get to the bottom of why they can’t pay people correctly.
A bulletin will follow the meeting on the 11th July, and we will update members on the push for the company to pay for an audit of wages.
Region 6 backpay Victory!
This week Transit Systems began paying what will be more than 3 million dollars in backpay owed to ex-STA employees who worked for TSA between 2019 and 2021, past and present.
As with any victory the union achieves, it is not done without dedicated delegates, officials and the support of our members. A bulletin sent to RTBU Region 6 members can be read here.
Region 6 EA Update
In Region 6, TSA are continuing to run shift modelling as requested by the RTBU. The company is also running other shifts (with different length limits etc) and turning that into journals for the union to look over and discuss so as we get more and more data together, we’ll have a clearer picture of how things need to be to meet member expectations.
As mentioned many times, the primary focus here is to create a single roster with the same penalties and shift timings, and there are a lot of interconnected issues that come up when you change the smallest things. Once this has been nailed down better, we'll be able to get into exactly what shape rosters and shifts will look like and have more detail to present to members.
The next bargaining meeting is scheduled for the 7th July and will not be a full day. The plan is to go over what has been generated so far and start discussing what the company has issues with and how we can get around them when it comes to preserving the parameters in the Copied State Award.
An update for members will follow that meeting.
Region 7 Bargaining Update
At the last meeting we had on the 24th June, we discussed more of the issues that we saw with the draft Agreement proposed by Busways.
An example of this the current Busways proposal for sick leave. Keep in mind this is not something that has been agreed to but is being used as an example.
It has been proposed by the company that the 3 groups of Sick Leave accrual (8,10 and 15 days) are folded into a 10-day standard. Again, this is an example, and nothing has been agreed to. The issue is there are no figures available yet for how much savings this delivers the company, and we need to know that so we can look at possibly putting that savings towards maintaining entitlements and conditions members have marked as priorities.
This is why bulletins have been sparse at the moment- nothing has landed close to where it will be eventually and we’re still discussing everything very broadly. Even using that example will have some people thinking Sick Leave has disappeared, but it hasn’t.
When we get into specifics and can give members information we are confident is close to the outcome we think members are after, we will. Until then it’s all negotiation.
The union is also drafting replacement clauses for some of those in the draft that the union considers too heavy handed, such as the Absence Management Procedure.
The next meeting is scheduled for the 15th July.
As always, members will have the final say on the EA result.
In solidarity,
David Babineau and Daniel Jaggers
