Overtime or emergency duty? Telstra drops attempt to short change employees
The CWU and Telstra have resolved their dispute over emergency duty– at least for the time being.
As reported in the last E-bulletin for 2014 (#23), last December the CWU notified the Fair Work Commission of a dispute over the correct payments due to Telstra employees when they are called back to work after ordinary hours.
The CWU view is that the current Enterprise Agreement is perfectly clear on this point.
Employees can only be recalled to work after they have gone home under two circumstances – either under the Emergency Duty provisions or under the Essential Customer Servicing arrangements.
The first attracts a 200% penalty. The second involves a schedule of payments for being on-call on top of normal overtime rates.
Management at the Global Operation Centre however were attempting to call staff back to work and then only pay them ordinary overtime rates.
Following mediation conducted by Commissioner Gibb, Telstra has agreed to abide by the terms of the EA as they currently apply.
Management have flagged, however, that they want to revisit this issue in the coming Enterprise Agreement negotiations. Watch this space!
