Silcar Communications EA
Negotiations for a new Enterprise Agreement (EA) in Silcar Communications have now been going since mid-2016 but no agreement has yet been reached.
At meetings at the end of last year, Silcar Communications employees told the company’s management that they were still not happy with the company’s Enterprise Agreement proposals. Silcar has yet to come back to employees and their representatives with a new offer.
CWU members will recall that Silcar Communications is now part of Visionstream.
Management’s objective in the current Enterprise Agreement (EA) negotiations is to align conditions in the former Silcar as closely as possible with those contained in the Visionstream Field Workforce Agreement.
This is no easy task as Silcar conditions are in many key respects better than those provided for in the Visionstream agreement. To date, management has not put an offer on the table that employees are tempted to take up, even if sitting tight on their current agreement risks delaying a pay rise.
The main stumbling blocks to agreement have been the amount being offered for buying out certain current conditions (e.g. the 36 ¾ hour week) and the proposal to base future redundancy entitlements on the National Employment Standards (NES) rather than on payments to a portable industry scheme.
The CWU expects negotiations to resume later this month and believes there is a prospect of a new offer which may offer a way forward. Members will be advised of developments.
