Telstra Bargaining Update - 15 May 2024
Your Union bargaining representatives met with Telstra again this week, and formally submitted the following claims:
1. An equal wage increase for all employees.
Any fixed remuneration wage outcomes provided by any new Agreement should be provided equally to all employees, regardless of employment mode – including job family.
Fixed and guaranteed pay increases offer stability and certainty to employees and their families. This is starkly different to Telstra’s discriminatory approach of linking wage outcomes to metrics and outcomes outside of employee control.
It is inherently unfair that two individual employees can receive inconsistent wage increases having performed the same job to the same standard throughout the year.
2. Fair and transparent measures for performance ratings to be included in the EA.
Any performance rating system should be conducted according to principles which are clearly defined in the EBA, including:
- The ability to review a rating by the employee;
- Subject to the disputes clause;
- Moderate manager discretion to ensure consistency across the company;
- Targets to account for planned absences and be agreed, measurable and achievable;
- Targets are set quarterly and employees will be provided with a copy of any records or information relied upon during the process; and
- Without objective performance indicators, there is inconsistent evaluation and feedback across different managers and without clear criteria for assessment, individual biases and perceptions invariably influence performance evaluations, leading to unwarranted disparities in ratings and rewards among employees.
3. Higher duties allowance clause.
We are seeking provisions to ensure a higher duties allowance is paid when a job family employee is required to perform duties at a higher level for longer than one day, rather than the current unfair and unreasonable requirement of 20 days.
Additionally, we are seeking that any qualifying period for higher duties allowance should be cumulative and not require continuous or uninterrupted performance of the higher role, to better account for part-time employees and employees performing short, but regular, periods of higher duties.
4. Night shift provisions.
We believe the Agreement should better reflect the working environment for workers performing night shifts and ensure employees performing work during these unsociable hours are appropriately and fairly compensated.
Currently, the Award only provides for a 30% penalty for a permanent night shift, where less than one third of the working time is afternoon or day shift over a shift cycle. This is significantly less beneficial, with 30% penalties only applying where an entire shift falls within 6pm-8am. This allows scheduling of predominately night shift workers with a handful of day shifts for the purpose of avoiding liability for payment of night shift penalties.
At this meeting, Telstra also provided its response to some of our claims raised and tabled at our last meeting:
1. Policy matters to be incorporated into the EBA.
Telstra have rejected this claim, stating that this would lead to increased complexity and reduce flexibility.
2. Fixed term employees to be offered permanent employment.
Telstra have rejected this claim.
3. Working from home to be included in the EA.
Telstra have rejected this claim stating that the current policy is working well.
The Union reiterated its claims that employees are looking for certainty and security when working from home. Many employees have family commitments that are built around their ability to access the working from home provisions and any uncertainty and stress caused by those provisions not being protected by the EBA can be negated by including the policy, amongst the many other policy matters we have sought protection for, within the Agreement.
Bargaining will continue next week and we will keep members updated as talks progress.
In the meantime, should you require any further information, please contact your State Branch Official.
