Telstra: CWU challenges Design banding decisions
The CWU continues to pursue issues arising out of the Design banding review being conducted in Network Services.
Many CWU members have expressed concerns about both the process and the outcomes of this review which Telstra says is aimed at getting consistency in the banding of roles across the design area.
It has been conducted without union involvement.
The Phase 1 of the review focussed on design support roles and resulted in five ”core” roles being identified, with new “Success Profiles” being developed for each of them.
The key question here is whether these Profiles amount to new or changed Job Descriptions (JDs). If so, the whole process is in breach of Section C1 of the Enterprise Agreement which requires CWU agreement to any changes to JDs.
Telstra claims that the Success Profiles aren’t new JDs and align with current JDs. The CWU has set up a working party with membership involvement which is testing this claim.
The other question is whether the actual banding outcomes (i.e. upgrades or lack of upgrades) arising out of the review correctly reflect the work members are actually doing. Based on the union survey conducted last month, the CWU is looking at this issue on a case-by-case basis.
The union met with Telstra on Tuesday 31 May to discuss a number of instances where the CWU believes members have not been correctly graded. In some cases we have asked for records of the amount of time members have spent acting in higher roles.
Discussion around these individual cases in ongoing.
