Silcar Communications: EA update
Negotiations for a new Enterprise Agreement to cover employees in Silcar Communications (now part of Visionstream/Ventia) continue. A second round of employee consultation sessions has just been held to seek feedback on company’s latest offer.
As E-bulletin readers will be aware, the aim of the present negotiations is to see whether an agreement can be reached which will meet the objectives of both management and employees between now and 2018, when a single agreement covering both Silcar and Visionstream employees will be negotiated.
Silcar is currently seeking either to buy out or, in some cases, preserve conditions in the current Silcar agreement which are better than those available to Visionstream employees.
Employees are basically looking to protect the value of their current entitlements – not only over the next two years, but into the future.
Currently management is offering to buy out conditions such as the 36 ¾ hour week, double time payment for all overtime and a reduction in redundancy entitlements. But employees calculate that the sums on offer won’t even compensate them for their losses over the next two years, let alone over future years if they stay with the company after 2018.
With employees currently unimpressed by management’s proposals it is possible that a fresh approach to the transition between now and 2018 will have to be explored.
The negotiating parties meet again on 20 October.
