NBN subbies celebrate their first win
NBN technicians engaging in action this week can celebrate the first win in their campaign for fair treatment.
Following lengthy discussions with NBN Delivery Partner Lendlease, we are excited to announce that CEPU National President Shane Murphy and Sydney based subcontractors have secured agreement with Lendlease to facilitate a genuine pathway to direct engagement – knocking the ‘Primes’ out of the food chain. This will apply wherever Lendlease have a contract.
Subbies who have lodged an EOI and who have not yet heard back from Lendlease are requested to immediately escalate their EOI by providing their company information through to the following email address, which has been specifically setup by Lendlease to manage this process: subcontractor.unify@lendlease.com members should also CC feedback@cepu.org into this email, so that we have some visibility to monitor the process with Lendlease. Subbies who have not yet applied to Lendlease can follow the same onboarding process.
We have also commenced talks with BSA and Visionstream and early indications are is that a similar approach can be secured – we will keep members updated as those talks progress. But, it’s time for Service Stream to agree to meet with the Union to address their pyramid contracting arrangements – time is running out for them as protests are currently being planned at their locations.
Our progress so far is a massive step in the right direction, and a first win that subbies who made a conscious decision to become organised and stand up against a corrupt system have won with their action.
However, there is much more to do.
The Union will continue to support subbies in this campaign to clean up the job dispatch debacle, for fairer rates, a complete end to the pyramid contracting model at all delivery partners and a Parliamentary Inquiry to properly investigate the many claims of corruption occurring within the industry.
Our calls for Parliamentary scrutiny have been heard by Shadow Communications Minister Michelle Rowland MP, who yesterday met with Sydney subbies and pledged Labor’s support for our fight.
Workers deserve fairness, dignity and respect and the public deserves to know who’s nests have been feathered by the billions of taxpayer funds squandered on the NBN project – and we won’t stop in our push to ensure this occurs.
We won’t stop until all of your issues are resolved. But we need your help.
At this stage, the action engaged in by subcontractors nationwide will continue through to Monday pending further talks with NBN Co and its delivery partners.
Further, we are asking all subcontractors involved in our actions to register on to our online database. This will assist us with coordinating action and communicating with you all. Please do this as soon as possible by visiting https://tinyurl.com/subbiesregister
We’re starting to get some runs on the board, but we can’t win this fight without you.
