000VICTORIA TABLE INITIAL PACKAGE OFFER

The 4 Unions received a `package offer' from 000Victoria during the Wed, 7 Feb 24 bargaining meeting. The Unions are providing details of the package for members' consideration.

What did the 000VIC package contain?

This is a without prejudice offer, meaning it is not finalised, and is not complete on all the details. The Unions consider that some issues are close to being resolved, some issues that need further discussion and others that need much more discussion for there to be an agreement.

The Offer

A 4-year agreement with 3% pay rises annually.

A one-off sign-on bonus for all permanent employees covered by the Agreement at the commencement of the Agreement. 000VIC has advised that this will most likely be $5,500 for full time employees and will be pro-rated for part-time employees.

Multiskilling opportunities
All eligible employees, who do not have four skills, will have the opportunity to gain at least two additional skills above their two primary stream call taking skills. Expressions of Interest for multiskilled training will open within 3 months of the commencement of the Agreement and all eligible employees will be offered the ability to have at least 4 skills within three years of the Agreement being approved.

Conversion Hours
Conversion hours will no longer be required to be worked where hours have been adjusted because of training, mentoring, moving into another role or where an individual has been moved at 000VIC request into another team/roster.

Leave
Commitments and improvements to leave visibility.
Increasing group allowances to increase leave available to be taken.
Automatic leave approvals for requests for LSL and annual leave, for a minimum of one rotation, if they are made over 12 months in advance.. This excludes TL/ATLs.
The current trial of approving leave when 3 out of 4 shifts are available for leave continue. Available for one person above group allowance. When the fourth shift in a rotation is not available it will be reviewed and approved for those on 38/40/42-hour rotations where they work 4 in 9 days. Can apply to any combination of shifts that make up one rotation. the leave policy within the Agreement, enabling disputes in relation to access to occur.
80/20 career break for transition to retirement employees.
Changes to Purchased Leave allowing operational employees access to purchase leave.
Changes to secondary caregiver parental leave when they become a primary caregiver within the first 13 weeks of birth/adoption of child. An additional 8 weeks of paid leave for these employees.

Improvements to leave arrangements. This includes the inclusion into the agreement of Assisted Reproductive Leave, Cultural and Ceremonial Leave, Career breaks, Infectious Diseases Leave, Defence Leave, Blood Donation Leave, Leave Donation, Compassionate Leave.

A New Classification structure:
With higher base rates for new call takers.
With higher rates of pay for the vast majority of employees. In some cases, this will result in base rate increases of more than the 3% standard pay increases provided for by government wages policy.
Recognises 000VIC employees as emergency services workers.
Improves multi-skilling pathways, embedded into the Agreement to ensure equitable access to career progression.
New Senior Call Taker and Senior Dispatcher positions to recognise valuable experience at these levels. These roles are not vacancy-based but will be based on how many years employees have been a Call Taker or Dispatcher and will be defined as: worked as a Dispatcher for 7 years.
New Senior Team Leader position to recognise additional leadership qualifications and experience for Team Leaders
Establishing clearer and increased pathways for career advancement.
Recognition and reward for training progression (including classroom and consolidation).

Mentoring.
Offer of $7p/hr for mentors.
Improved training to become a mentor.
However, there is no agreement on what the ratios should be when mentoring.

Training and Trainers. 000VIC has developed an updated training framework, to be finalised in consultation with the unions. Key updates will address:
Professional development access for trainers.
Coaching centres for new learners.
Classroom training time.
Classroom sizes.
Workplace trainer roles and qualifications.
Scenario training.

Staffing levels. 000VIC have resisted the Unions' claim to have safe staffing levels within the Agreement. However, the Staffing, Deployment and Scheduling Policy has been improved which will be referenced in the Agreement, allowing for disputes to be brought about staffing levels. It will have minimum numbers and scheduling and deployment rules. 00VIC have expanded the current to include:
Minimum staffing for call takers and dispatchers across all sites and services, reviewed at a minimum every 12 months.
Commitments to ensure all reasonable steps are taken to resource to these staffing levels.
Commitment to cease the multi-selecting practice in Fire within the life of the agreement.
Commitment to utilise the standard roster as the foundation for staffing the operational workforce.
Commitment to utilise nonstandard rosters as the primary source to meet predictable peak demand periods above those that are met by standard rosters.
Processes for consultation on roster changes provisions for deploying the nonstandard roster workforce.
Staffing and deployment data will be provided regularly to UCC.

Commitments to timely and adequate feedback on career progression opportunities

Implementation of a Right to disconnect clause.

UCC Consultation (improvements to current clause).

Delegate and Union related Matters (improvements to current clause).

Key Issues, to be resolved.

MOU payments.
Increased personal leave and annual leave.
Fire Calls to police.
WILSECC: inequities in access to penalties and career progression.
Non-standard rosters.
TL/ATL and Part-timers access to 3-in-4 rule.
TL/ATL access to the auto approval for 12 months in advance (2 above group allocation).

Industrial Action

Members should continue to actively participate in as many of the current 10 bans as possible each shift. Unions encourage members to get photos together in your campaign shirts, call boards, etc. and send them to your Union to continue to use for media campaigns.
The remaining 48 bans were notified Tuesday afternoon to commence for 5 minutes at 9.00 am on Saturday, 10 February 2024. There is a 60-day timeframe for notifying new bans, with that due to expire the Unions notified the remaining bans. As an annexure to this please see attached the bans notified.
Sue Riley, CWU sriley@cwu.asn.au

000VICTORIA BANS NOTIFIED

1. An indefinite ban on using personally assigned Computer Aided Dispatch and/or telephony logins.

2. An indefinite ban on processing all Non-Emergency Patient Transport requests unless lodged via telephone.

3. An indefinite ban on notifying FRV or CFA Duty Officers, Commanders and Fire Services Communications Controllers of all incidents unless response related.

4. Employees will undertake stoppages to the performance of duties - other than activities related to emergency response - to participate in an unlimited number of briefings and interviews over an unlimited duration to the media, politicians and the public regarding enterprise bargaining issues, industrial issues and conditions of employment for ESTA operational staff.

5. An indefinite ban on employees participating in or conducting any online training.

6. An indefinite ban on employees conducting Call-Taker or Dispatcher training courses unless there is a ratio of 1 Trainer to 4 Participants, and the Trainer conducting the course unless there is a ratio of 1 Trainer to 4 Participants, and the Trainer conducting the course has completed a Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training and is trained in the service that is being taught.

7. An indefinite ban on Team Leaders participating in/or conducting any process relating to employee misconduct and disciplinary matters.

8. An indefinite ban on employees conducting or recording audits.

9. An indefinite ban on employees signing off/or reviewing audits.

10. An indefinite ban on employees replying to observation and/or compliance reports.

11. An indefinite ban on employees using the ESTA email system, excluding the sending and receiving of union material.

12. An indefinite ban on employees accurately reporting or recording event types.

13. Employees will undertake stoppages to the performance of duties - other than activities related to emergency response - to use the CFA and/or FRV non- emergency circuit of the emergency alerting pager system to send campaign and/or industrial messages.

14. An indefinite ban on employees' multi-selecting channels.

15. An indefinite ban on employees implementing and/or maintaining a channel patching arrangement where multiselecting would be required.

16. An indefinite ban on employees undertaking reception duties.

17. An indefinite ban on employees opening and closing front and/or rear gates.

18. An indefinite ban on employees recording or selecting specific or accurate disposition codes. Employees will record/select a generic and/or randomised disposition code.

19. An indefinite ban on employees recording or selecting specific or accurate call source codes. Employees will record/select a generic/randomised call source code or no call source code.

20. An indefinite ban on employees participating in or conducting performance feedback.

21. An indefinite ban on employees changing status of crews.

22. An indefinite ban on employees using the "create" function when a call is taken. Instead, the Call-Taker will use a create function prior to the call being taken.

23. An indefinite ban on employees using the attempt to dispatch and/or no nearby units function.

24. An indefinite ban on employees ticking the `significant' box and/or `suspicious' box in the Computer Aided Dispatch software.

25. An indefinite ban on employees dispatching an event to the Fire Services Communications Controller or Rostered Duty Officer mnemonic.

26. An indefinite ban on employees using the duplicating and cancelling events function.

27. An indefinite ban on employees creating an impound event.

28. An indefinite ban on employees arranging move ups and or step ups.

29. An indefinite ban on employees taking their breaks at the assigned times.

30. An indefinite ban on employees sitting at assigned workstations.

31. An indefinite ban on employees working on channels as specified in the roster.

32. An indefinite ban on employees utilising the paging system to notify FRV employees of the Commander Recall list.

33. An indefinite ban on actioning any and all FRV & CFA EXEC & CMDR (i.e. station officers and/or commanders) non-current event related movements (who are not attached to an event), including logging on/off, location changes & status changes.

34. An indefinite ban on actioning any and all FRV & CFA EXEC & CMDR (i.e. station officers and/or commanders) non-current event related movements (who are not attached to an event), including logging on/off, location changes & status changes.

35. An indefinite ban on recording or repeating all SITREP's and MESSAGES once an event has an Under Control (UC) or Stop (ST) status.

36. An indefinite ban on processing all business calls that are not received via phone, (including those received via fax, email or Burnoff-Bot).

37. An Indefinite ban on employees processing non-urgent faxes, burnoff emails and/or business/non-emergency emails while logged into the phone queue or actively undertaking the dispatch role.

38. An indefinite ban on performing sign-on sheets whilst performing duties.

39. An indefinite ban on completing the ambulance unit line up sheet.

40. An indefinite ban on recording delays on arrival times.

41. An indefinite ban on ERTCOMM Call-Takers using recorded voice announcement.

42. An indefinite ban on Team Leaders and Assistant Team Leaders communicating nuisance caller details to operational employees.

43. An indefinite ban on the use of fault reporting and messaging software.

44. Employees will not perform work unless they are able to record and/or broadcast over the radio how many CallTakers are logged in to take calls.