Telecommunications
Progress report on talks
(13 July, 2009): Negotiations between the unions have been continuing each week since 17 June with actual negotiations beginning on 24 June. On 1 July the new Fair Work laws commenced.
Telstra, along with all other employers engaged in “good faith bargaining”, are required by the new laws to circulate information to all eligible employees about their right to appoint a bargaining agent for the negotiations. Telstra has done that.
Under the law, if an employee is a union member, and they do not nominate their own bargaining agent, then the union automatically becomes/is their bargaining agent for the negotiations.
As we said, the unions have been involved in the negotiations with Telstra over a new EBA since the talks re-stared in earnest on 24 June.
THE EBA TALKS SO FAR
The negotiations with Telstra have proceeded smoothly so far.
Telstra and the unions have exchanged preliminary lists of issues; the parties have sought/ provided extensive information from/to each other to enable the discussions, and to try to understand each others positions on issues.
To this point considerable negotiation time has been spent on the issues of performance management, performance pay and bonus payments, banding and classification systems and exchanging analysis about the implications for Telstra employees, the company and for the unions of the new Fair Work laws.
Other issues that have been either covered in some detail or only briefly:
Who should the new agreement covered eg AWA employees? (expired AWA employees are already cover), ECA based employees? And if that were agreed, what would be the process and the difficulties?
- a broad salary sacrifice clause
- purchase of extra leave and cashing out of leave
- redundancy provisions
- structure of any agreement (eg Part A/Part B or not)
It is important to note that there are no agreements yet on any of the above items, other than general agreement on the implications of some of the new laws for the parties.
However, the unions’ view have been put clearly on the table Telstra’s own position should also soon become clearer.
The negotiations have been consistent with the spirit of “good faith bargaining” so far.
More talks are programmed for later next week commencing.
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