What’s been happening so far?
28/3/25, What’s been happening so far? Well unfortunately, not a lot. After the RTBU sent a 30+ page Log of Claims to KDH, they’ve sat on it for about 2 months. We went through some of the items in the short meetings we’ve had but have had no feedback from the company. The meeting lengths are an issue, specifically because in the housekeeping meeting we had before Christmas, day long meetings were agreed to by all parties. Additionally, the company said repeatedly they had a Log of Claims and would provide it only after receiving ours. They got ours and nothing happened and after several meetings admitted they had no Log of Claims to present.
These issues have resulted in the RTBU sending the company a ‘Letter of Concern’ on 28/3/25 to outline our concerns that the company is not bargaining in Good faith, which is a requirement under the Fair Work Act. In addition to this we have also sent them notification for Protected Action which will kick off next week. Uniform bans and not logging into the BDCs will start 3 April 2025 and continue indefinitely. Stoppages are also planned but the timing of these is important to get right. We want to avoid impact school services if we possibly can. Other actions will be put on if the company does not engage more seriously with your Union.
The main reason for such a big Log of Claims is that between every negotiation, companies spend years trying to find loopholes in EAs and squeezing more work out of people for a cheaply as possible. We need to close not only those loopholes, but also issues from government operation. The original STA Award was designed to work in conjunction with the Roster Clerk Guide and Payroll manual. Because of this, there are things in those documents that by rights should be in the EA. In addition to that, once the contract expires in mid-2027, the next operator will have no knowledge of the government operation, it will be something in the distant past. We need to fix these things up NOW while we have an operator who understands how things are done and why they are done that way.