On Friday 15 August the CEPU met with Australia Post to discuss our draft Common Law Agreement.

We believe a number of factors compromised the development of EBA7:

• the abuse of WorkChoices to remove conditions that have existed in Post for many years, particularly matters that do pertain to the employment relationship;

• the position of the former Government that agreements like CLAs would not be permitted to co-exist with GBE enterprise agreements – a position that has now changed;

• Finally, the failure of Post to be open during the EBA7 talks about the impact of upcoming workplace change (we refer here principally to Future Delivery Design), which leads us to the view that EBA7 was shaped to accommodate major change without the Unions being told about this.

That's why we've pushed for the introduction of the Common Law Agreement.

The Common Law Agreement will give you a crucial safety net, catching all the conditions that Australia Post wants to drop from your awards and agreements.

The aim is for the CLA to work alongside EBA7 – as an added layer of protection for members’ wages and conditions and to:

• Promote full-time employment in Australia Post;

• Protect allowances and leave conditions; and,

• Create enforceable understandings on contracting out, the use of agency staff, dedicated delivery and franchising.

We see the CLA as one avenue towards the path of securing your pay and conditions.

But we're not inflexible on how to reach this point.

We informed senior management: if you can recommend another enforceable way to achieve the same outcome we're willing to consider this.

A range of options could open up to do this, but Post cannot remain stuck to the view that EBA7 cannot be changed - because we'll all get nowhere taking this view.

The Union wants to reach agreement with Post but senior management must realise the support we have for securing greater protection for our members.

A CLA working alongside EBA7 is one way of doing this.

Whichever way you look at it, these things are clear:

• members want more protection for their wages and conditions;

• EBA7 on its own will not receive support without enforceable assurances on the matters contained within the CLA;

• both parties need to meet urgently and put some intensive focus on finding ways to move the agreement forward;

• that this be done quickly and not be dragged out - the Union has asked that these talks be wrapped up by Friday 5 September; and,

We've written to Australia Post today calling on them to meet to deal with these issues and offering the use of a jointly funded private mediator to see if this can help move the parties closer to agreement.  We also asked that the management representatives on the negotiating teams be delegated the authority to make decisions on the EBA and CLA