CMET Bargaining
Today the RTBU and ETU met with CMET in the first bargaining meeting. The company is keen to progress things as quickly as possible and so have responded to some of our claims already. These are often ‘in principle’ agreements which means they agree to do it but exactly how is yet to be sorted out.
A committee will meet next week to work on formulating rostering principles. These will deal with things like increasing the notification period for roster changes, increasing the display period for rosters, changes to the probationary period, changes to the progression steps in classifications, the mechanics of an Additional Day Off, defining maximum and minimum lengths for different shift types, and anything that impacts rosters. The point is to come up with broad guidelines we can put into the EA, but nothing so specific it means CMET can’t run the business properly.
Flagged clauses will be rewritten, and in some cases deleted. Replacements will be provided for the unions to consider.
The principle of a night shift allowance has been agreed to but not the amount. The principle of a Broken Shift allowance has also been agreed to but not the amount. For both of these, the company will come back with proposals and costings to show why a certain amount has been arrived at.
The next meeting is set for August 26th due to people being on leave, but we’ll be continuing discussions via email between now and then. The company genuinely wants this done fast and is looking for a result to be put to employees for a vote in September.
We will report back as things develop.