Talks continued with the Unions’ Single Bargaining Unit (SBU) and Telstra meeting this week to continue negotiations
Clause 45
Clause 45 once again dominated discussions at the latest meeting – with Telstra responding to the SBU’s proposal, advanced at the last meeting.
As you may recall, the SBU had advanced proposals that would secure and preserve terms and conditions for current employees who transferred to a subsidiary under the terms of the clause.
The only option fully supported by the SBU, to transfer employees via secondment, has again been rejected by Telstra – who cited administrative difficulties.
However, we have reached breakthrough surrounding the preservation of retrenchment benefits. Redundancy benefits would be preserved, by contract, upon transfer and would ensure that any offer of employment with a subsidiary via Clause 45 would not be deemed ‘suitable’ unless it provided this preservation of the calculation of your current redundancy benefits.
This would mean that any employee transferring to a subsidiary would have their redundancy benefits secured in contract – an enormous leap forward for our discussions.
Further, should a redundancy situation occur at a time after the transfer has occurred, those benefits would be calculated on the employee’s fixed remuneration at the current time, or based on fixed remuneration at the time of transfer from Telstra to the subsidiary – whichever is greater.
The SBU have committed to deliberate over these proposed new terms and respond with a position at the next meeting.
Pay
Telstra has also revealed today that should an agreement for a new EBA not be reached and approved prior to 1 October, they propose to increase fixed wages by a further 1.5%.
For Workstream employees – a 1.5% increase to fixed remuneration will be realised. However, for Job Family employees, a 1.5% pay pool will apply to be distributed according to the matrix – with an actual increase range of 0% – 2%.
We will continue to keep members updated as talks progress with the next meeting to occur next week. In the meantime, should you require any further information, please contact Branch Officials Cade Anderson or Peter O’Connell on (02) 9893 7822.
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