We are moving towards the end of the bargaining period as all indications seem to demonstrate that Telstra is preparing a draft EBA to go out to employees for a vote.
However, as reported previously there is no agreement on some issues Telstra wishes to have included in the EBA. Members on our regular EBA hook-up on Tuesday (11 Aug) requested we provide more detail on the major issues confronting us at this time. Those issues are:
- Proposed changes to the redundancy/redeployment conditions which would mean giving Telstra the capacity to forcibly deploy or reassign employees who find themselves in a redundant position.
According to Telstra’s required clauses, no redundancy pay would be available to such an employee if they refused a Telstra-directed redeployment. What is more if you are redeployed into a position 1 or 2 bands below your current position, then you will treated as ‘overpaid’ and you will not even receive the 3% pay rises contained in this agreement. Your higher level salary would be frozen.
If you are forcibly reassigned and Telstra happen to agree that the position is not suitable, then they have the option of forcibly reassigning/redeploying you to another position. This can go on indefinitely.
In Telstra’s draft EA, Telstra dresses up this totally unacceptable position under the heading “Employment Security”.
Telstra tried this on in the last EBA talks but common sense finally prevailed on that occasion. It appears they are trying it on again despite being told many times in the talks, over many months, that such a position would be unacceptable to our members/their employees.
- Telstra wishes to deny new starters in the CFW and TW areas of the business, the choice of going on to the Workstream arrangements (where pay, conditions and banding are negotiated) and directing them into the so-called ‘Job Family’ arrangements (where performance, pay, conditions and banding are dictated by Telstra and non-negotiable).
- The choice of employees coming off AWAs and ITEAs to move to the Workstream section of the EBA will now be truncated to remove this right after 12 months.
You would be forced into the performance based pay ‘Job Family’ arrangements.
Telstra are obviously hoping that their offer of a 3% pay rise per year will induce people to vote ‘yes’. In this regard it must be pointed out that only people on the Workstream arrangements are guaranteed this payment.
People on the so-called ‘Job Family’ arrangements (or AWAs or ITEAs) will only get what Telstra managers want to give them based on their assessment of their performance. In some cases they will receive nothing.
- Proposed changes to the Emergency Duty provisions would allow staff who are not on the “essential customer servicing” allowance to be rung up out of hours and perform Emergency Work from home to only be paid a minimum payment of 1 hr (not 3 hrs at double time as currently applies in the 2012-2015 EBA) Clearly this avoids paying the essential customer servicing (on call/emergent/immediate) allowance to be able to have staff contactable out of hours, as well as not paying the 3hrs at double time.
Why would staff bother to perform such work when they are penalised for doing so?
- In addition Telstra has refused to deal in the EBA with important items on the union’s log of claims, including such important issues as the proper regulation of GPS use, and the proper banding for people doing customer field and technical jobs.
The current position adopted by Telstra may clearly mean that we could advise members that it may be in their interests to oppose the current proposed EBA. This could initially involve a “Vote No” campaign.
If a ‘Vote No’ campaign was successful then the current EBA would remain in place with no change to conditions.
Members would then need to decide whether to implement a legally protected industrial campaign (after the expiry of the current EBA on September 30) to win acceptable wage increases.
Members will be advised of any updates on a regular basis, depending on developments.
In the meantime a Survey Monkey online survey has been launched. Please take the time to fill it in as your input to this survey is extremely important to us.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZRNWXKP