JOB FAMILY - HIGHER DUTIES

We have written to Telstra as follows:

With the focus on HDA in the EBA negotiations, some members have raised an issue. We write seeking that the Telstra guidelines for higher duties be amended to remove a confusion being wrongly interpreted in the field. The offending Telstra statement is this:
Frequently Asked Questions: Does an employee need to be on a secondment to receive Higher Duties Allowance? For Job Family and CLC contracts, the employee must be on a Secondment for at least 4 weeks.
Clause 62 of the EBA deals with higher duties. There is no requirement that the worker be "seconded". The legal position is this: If you do higher duties for 4 weeks or more, then you must be paid higher duties for that time.
We look forward to your solution.

62. HIGHER DUTIES ALLOWANCE - EBA

62.1. Eligibility
a) If we require you to perform work of a higher classified role on a temporary basis (generally not longer than 12 months), you will be eligible to receive a higher duties allowance as follows.
b) If you are a Job Family Employee, you must perform some or all of the work of a higher classified role for a period of at least 4 weeks to qualify for a higher duties allowance.

HIGHER DUTIES - TELSTRA PROMPT REPLY

We received a very prompt reply from Telstra. It said:

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.
We agree with your understanding regarding Clause 62 of the EBA: there is no requirement for the worker to be "seconded." If an employee performs higher duties for 4 weeks or more, they are entitled to the higher duties allowance for that period.
We had already revised the policy to reflect this, but unfortunately, there was a processing error that caused a delay in implementing the update.
We are now addressing this issue, and the corrected policy will be fixed very shortly.

JOB SWAPS

Any member seeking a swap could register with us to establish a connection with someone who may wish to go, or stay. We have a CFW7 CT in GBS who is seeking a redundancy swap. Contact us and we will provide a connection.

TELSTRA EBA REPORT

We met with Telstra this week, and submitted the following claims:

1. Workplace safety and responsibility
We are seeking to have important representative or legal compliance roles recognised and remunerated by Telstra. This includes, most importantly, health and safety representatives (HSR), fire wardens and harassment contact officers. These are important roles that create a safer and healthier workplace.
Telstra employees who have been elected or appointed into the role of a HSR is to undertake the Comcare approved training course within 2 months of the election. The primary purpose of a HSR is to represent peers in health and safety matters.
However, without the Comcare approved training, a HSR is unable to perform the full range of functions of their role, and are unable to initiate actions available to them under relevant health and safety legislation.

2. Consultation
We are seeking to improve the provisions for consultation between Telstra, its employees and their representatives, before decisions that have impacts on employees are made.
We argued that simply informing the Union and employees of a decision taken by Telstra following months of planning (such as the recent bombshell that 2800 jobs are in the firing line) is purely lip service and does not provide a genuine opportunity for employees and their Unions to influence the decision maker to mitigate against negative effects on workers and their jobs.
Genuine consultation should also extend to decisions to introduce or extend casual or non-ongoing employment, contracting or labour hire arrangements.
It is beneficial for both employers and employees, leading to early detection of potential negative consequences. It will boost employee engagement in decision making - promoting transparency, fairness and constructive workplace relationships.

3. Retrenchment benefits exclusive of 4 weeks' notice
We are seeking for payment in lieu of notice of redundancy to be in addition to, and not form part of the prescribed retrenchment benefit. This is particularly important considering the recent announcements of a further slew of job cuts. We have also sought for the placement period, which is currently used as the notice period, to be optional where an employee does not see value in participating.

4. Retail breaks
We are seeking to formalise and specify retail rest breaks in the EA. We have sought for all employees to receive 1 x 10 minute paid rest break where an employee is rostered to work 4 or more hours, and 2 x 10 minute rest breaks where rostered to work 7 or more hours. This break should be in addition to existing meal breaks.

5. Unpaid overtime
We are seeking a commitment to conduct a joint review involving Unions to investigate and discontinue the systemic unpaid overtime issues which currently plague employees working in the retail and contact centre occupational groups.

6. Delegates rights

At this meeting, Telstra also provided its response to some of our claims raised and tabled at our last meeting:

1. Employees to have the ability to challenge customer feedback score (NPS)
Telstra have rejected this claim - claiming a mitigation process already exists that allows employees to challenge a poor NPS score. The Union has requested further information of the process, which is clearly not well-known and indicated that we believe that an employee's ability to challenge a poor rating should be strengthened and contained within the Agreement.

2. Revised working from home / flexible work claim
After originally refusing our claim to protect working from home provisions by including them in the EBA, the union submitted a revised claim. Telstra has again refused this claim, stating that it did not want a formalised process for flexible work. Telstra did agree to add some words that indicate their support for flexible work to be included within the Agreement. We are waiting to see a draft.

3. Parental leave of 26 weeks
Telstra have refused our claim, stating their current 16 weeks offered is sufficient and any increase would place a financial burden on the business and would detract from any wage increase offering.

4. Additional ARL and direction to take leave
Telstra have refused our claim, stating that any increase in ARL to compensate for the direction to take leave during a shutdown period was cost prohibitive and places a financial burden upon the business. Telstra also stated that if they increase the amount of leave an employee could accrue before they were able to direct them onto leave, this would be a risk to health and safety.