Silcar Communications: negotiations near conclusion
The CWU is continuing to work with Silcar on finalising the documents that will accompany the transfer of employees currently covered by the Silcar Communications Enterprise Agreement to the Visionstream Field Workforce Agreement.
Although these negotiations have been conducted as though the parties were bargaining for an new Enterprise Agreement, the actual process that has been agreed upon is that the former Silcar Comms employees, who are now part of Visionstream, will transfer to the Visionstream agreement while preserving certain, but not all, of their current conditions.
Where key conditions such as hours of work, overtime payments and redundancy pay arrangements are better in the current Silcar Communications agreement, management is proposing either to preserve those conditions until the next round of bargaining for the Visionstream EA or to buy out the conditions with a one-off payment.
The company has already put what it says is its final proposal in these core areas to employees in a series of consultation meetings.
However there has been a significant number of other issues, including such matters as payment of allowances, paternity leave provisions, training commitments, disciplinary and consultation procedures, where differences between the two current agreements have had to be resolved.
The parties have recently met on two occasions to attempt to finalise these issues. They will meet again on Thursday 25 May in what the CWU anticipates will be the last meeting before a final round of employee meetings is held.
