It pays to be united

STOP PRESS: MEMBERS VOTE NO TO AGREEMENT! READ MORE

Members will have received the final version of the proposed new Enterprise Agreement 2012 for their consideration ahead of a formal vote in coming days.

Members will be aware that your Union has been present at the negotiations on your behalf seeking to ensure our members’ views, and positions are bought to the negotiating table and hopefully those views and positions find their way into the New Agreement.

Without going into all of the fine details of the negotiations, from your Union’s perspective the following is how the negotiations went.
•    Your Union formulated a Log of Claims to be put to management based on the results of a survey of our members, this was done on the first day of negotiations (copy can be found on the USU web site)
•    Management presented their “log of claims” by serving on the negotiating representatives a “draft” proposed new Enterprise Agreement.
    This proposed “draft Enterprise Agreement”, stripped many of the existing conditions of employment, such as the Grandfather clause, unlimited sick leave, 35 hour week, union rights ... and the list goes on (a comparison document can be found on the USU website).
    Management made it clear that the negotiating representatives could negotiate conditions above their “draft proposed Agreement” as long as we “traded off” other existing conditions of employment, not already “stripped“ out of the existing agreement
•    Over several weeks, and several meetings, your Union and employee representatives worked to “claw” back conditions stripped out of the existing Enterprise Agreement and to improve conditions and wages for our members.
•    Staff information sessions were held, and your Union held meetings with our members to seek instructions on what our members wanted, and what they were most concerned about as a result of management “stripping” conditions out of the Existing Agreement.
•    Management concluded negotiations with your Union and representatives, after the last staff briefing, despite there being ongoing dissatisfaction of the proposed draft Agreement from your Union and some of your staff representatives.

What changes under the Enterprise Agreement you are about to vote on?

1.    You will only be a full time employee at ahm if you work a 37.5 hour week. If you are currently a full time employee at ahm you only need to work 35 hours, if you do not change to a 37.5 hour week, you will be classed as a Part Time Employee
2.    Those employees who had their hours of work and days of work “grandfathered” under the old agreement will no longer have those days and hours preserved under the new Agreement.
3.    Wage increases are less than what has occurred in the past, the increase of 2.5% for the first year is below the inflation rate, the 3% and 3% is less than what we sought through our Log of Claims
4.    The ordinary hours of work Monday to Friday have increased to 9pm
5.    Part Time employees who work additional hours over their rostered hours get paid a loading of 20%
6.    Shift loadings have been reduced by 2% to only 15%
7.    Overtime penalty rate of double time for work carried out on a Saturday has been removed
8.    Unlimited Sick Leave/Carers Leave (within guidelines) has been removed replaced with 10 days Y1, 10 days Y2 and 15 days thereafter and salary continuance @75% wages for long term illness
9.    Unlimited Bereavement Leave has been removed - replaced by 5 days per year
10.    Additional 2 days that employees used to receive have now changed to Good Health Days and Community Days, these cannot be paid out if not taken
11.    Parental leave goes to 14 weeks for all employees
12.    Long Service Leave reduces in the future for employees after 25 years service, by approximately 9 weeks
13.    Make-up pay after a work place accident is gone
14.    Redundancy pay reduced across most years of service
15.    Leisure Bank is gone, you can no longer accumulate time so you can have time off work in order to attend a planned event, such as a child’s school event, you may be able to make a separate arrangement to accrue time with your supervisor, but that agreement will only occur if the supervisor agrees!!!
16.    Classification and Salary Structure has some issues relating to benchmarks, that is, there is a strong view that the benchmarks set are too high

Ahm were required under the existing Agreement to have a new salary system in place within 12 months of the commencement of the existing agreement (by February 2010). This did not occur, but has now been presented under the proposed new agreement. Given that there is a new salary system now in place, the Union would argue that the salary system would/should/could be in place if the proposed new agreement did not get the required successful vote.

The proposed new Agreement stripped out many conditions of employment, with very little being offered to employees, if the agreement is voted down, attempts to continue negotiations with ahm would be pursued, and during that time existing conditions of employment would continue.

The decision to support or reject the proposed Enterprise Agreement is a matter for our members, who should take into account the potential loss of conditions and how they will affect you; sometimes a short term gain does not outweigh a long term loss.

Should you have any questions relating to the new agreement please contact your Organiser Rudi Oppitz on 0209 662 460 or email Rudi at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.