A lot has happened over the last 48 hours and there’s a lot of reading here but if you bear with us, you’ll see where the negotiations are going.

The negotiations have hit something of a brick wall.

Most frustrating is that the Company has yet to put a complete offer on the table with a dollar figure attached for a pay rise.

This means in real terms that the Company is looking for agreement with us on what’s in and out, without us knowing what the total package is likely to look like.

Rather than walk away from the negotiations, we want to break the stalemate and get THE BEST OFFER FOR YOUR RATES AND YOUR RIGHTS!

To do this we may have to put together an offer ourselves, but we need to know what to include and what not to include. 

Yesterday we ran meetings on site to get that feedback and now we are going to show you what YOU, THE WORKERS told us.

Any Package should include the SDA’s claims 3, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 23, 32, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41 and 44 (you can have a look at the SDA Log of Claims for the details below).

LOG OF CLAIMS EBA MARCH 2015-1
LOG OF CLAIMS EBA MARCH 2015-2

Any offer: CANNOT include

• CANNOT include a clause that restricts the agreement to applying to direct employees of the Company only
• CANNOT include allowances being frozen
• CANNOT include changes to the span of hours
• CANNOT include Part timers or Casuals being able to do 2 shifts in one day
• CANNOT include the Company having the ability to ask for documentation if you go home sick the day before a public holiday
• CANNOT include the Company having the ability to make you take your Annual Leave once you go over 6 weeks, and make you reduce it to 4.
• CANNOT include the ability to direct employees to work on Public Holidays
• CANNOT include the ability to expand the definition of Work Performance
• CANNOT include the addition of a definition for Part Shift and Full Shift.

Just as importantly the Company has put cost offsets on the table that it wants all parties to consider.  We ran these past the meetings yesterday and this is what YOU told us: 

• Most employees are willing to consider a further freeze of the Grade 1 rate, as long as they get at least one decent pay rise at the start of the agreement. (and I have to say, this surprised us given the feedback from the negotiations 2 years ago)
• Most employees would consider Grade 1 being extended to the first 18 months of employment, but only for new employees, employed after any new agreement.
• There should be no change to the loadings for ordinary hours between 4 and 5am, and 6 and 7pm, Monday to Friday.
• Some workers are willing to consider reducing the Saturday morning loading for ordinary hours to 150% and the Saturday night loading to 145%
• Most workers did not want to even consider reducing changing any of the ordinary hours loadings on a Sunday.
• Almost no one wants to consider a clause that would include employees having to meet 100% of the KPI’s
• Absolutely no one want to see the Redundancy provisions of YOUR agreement reduced to the National Employment Standards

Remember, none of this necessarily goes into any agreement, it just helps us to know what to negotiate for.

NOW HERE IS THE REALLY IMPORTANT BIT!

THESE ARE YOUR RATES AND YOUR RIGHTS!

This was the feedback we received from the meetings on Wednesday.  If you feel differently, you need to let YOUR SDA DELEGATES Gavin and Bevan know!  And let them know as soon as possible.

THESE ARE YOUR RATES AND YOUR RIGHTS and ONLY YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD ENOUGH! 

The SDA is listening to our members, not telling them what to do!