The CEPU is very concerned by Australia Post's continued failure to supply straight-forward answers to our questions about the impacts of Future Delivery Design on our members.

We know and appreciate that change is inevitable in all workplaces – employees have lived through them in Post and elsewhere.

In general terms, and from a union perspective, you pay close attention to workplace change, especially if:

• It will introduce unsafe ways of working
   

• It will cut jobs, income or make it much harder for you to work with the employer (for example, introducing unsociable work hours)

One of the reasons we push for strong consultation clauses is to make sure that before the change process begins we can carefully look at what’s being proposed to know what impact that change process will have on employees, our members. This protection sits in Clause 3 “Employee Consultation” of EBA6.

While Australia Post has been good at providing a lot of information about processes, technology, safety assessments – we want them to be equally good at answering our questions on what this means for your pay, job security, working hours, place of work, and career paths.

We wrote to Australia Post on Friday (30 May).  A copy of this correspondence is attached.  We were further responding to important matters of concern forwarded by Post management on 22 May to this significant change process. This is also attached for members.

Basically, we repeated our important request: Australia Post management has to put on the table all the information they currently have relevant to staffing impacts so that opportunities to offset any negative impacts on employees and the local workplace can be considered, recognised and addressed by management.

So, here’s the good and the bad, from where the union sees things:

• Post has said that “we are confident that… we can implement… without the need for compulsory redundancies”.  This commitment appears to only apply to Delivery.  That will give some comfort to members in that section.  However we are concerned about how concrete this commitment will be – and it also needs to be extended to other occupational groups who might be affected by FDD, such as members employed in Transport and Mail Processing sections.
   

• Post believes some of the new sequencing related processes might save an average of 45 minutes per PDO round.  That’s good for some of those members concerned about the heavy impact of continual overtime.  But for others, overtime is an important part of their income – especially in the current economic environment.  Further, we need to fully test and understand how this 10% reduction in time would allow Post to make the claim that: “we do not envisage… (the changes) will adversely impact on the job security of existing staff.”
   

• Post has also said “no PDO currently attracting a 15% shift penalty will lose that penalty” (our emphasis on the word ‘currently’).  Again, we noted this isn’t put forward as an undertaking.  We’ve asked Post to clarify: will this claim continue to have effect if a PDO changes jobs eg to another delivery centre? Will this apply permanently? Or alternatively, given hours will be reduced, will overall income ultimately be affected?
   

• CEPU has been told new PDO sort rates will be introduced for merged sequencing. The figure of 14 items per minute has been advised.  Certainly, the CEPU was not consulted in accordance with Clause 3 prior to this decision being made.  We’ve asked for further details about how this would be put in place.

But here’s our biggest problem with this process - Australia Post says it won’t be able to give us answers to our concerns until they have rolled out the changes and examined the impact.

Some may say: “Well that’s reasonable.  What’s wrong with that?”  But we ask you to consider this:

• Australia Post has been working on these plans for – at least - two to three years
   

• They’ve modeled this plan, conducted overseas visits, made purchases of equipment and worked out how much this is going to cost them and what benefit it will provide
   

• They have provided this information to the Board and got them to sign off on detailed plans
   

• Post has even calculated how much time it will save on a shift for an individual PDO – and worked out a likely sort rate

After all this work, over many years, they say they can’t answer our questions – about how many jobs might be affected and how?

And – on top of all this – instead of giving us a clear, complete picture of the impacts, Australia Post wants to lock us in to local consultative committees, without setting up joint National and State Steering Committees that will monitor and build a better understanding of the impacts.

We’re asked to agree to a change process that doesn’t spell out the impacts – but if we want to find out this information we should race from facility to facility to piece it all together via local facility councils that have historically failed to live up to expectations for real consultation and problem solving in the workplace.

In a nutshell, Post wants us to write a massive “blank cheque” on a major workplace change plan – with only limited commitments in relation to job security and penalties.

We remain committed to working through issues with Post – but that requires trust.  And you get that trust if you’ve been upfront at the start and committed to honouring commitments affecting the welfare of employees.  Right now, our view is that Post has to invest more to earn that trust.

It can start that process by responding positively to our calls for the status quo to remain pending consultation in accordance with Clause 3 BEFORE the changes are implemented.