Following the meeting on Friday 31st March 2017 Aerocare have given a written response to our claims to improve your Enterprise Agreement. Unfortunately members will have every reason to be disappointed at Aerocare’s failure to improve your terms and conditions of employment. We have won some improvements but Aerocare still have a long way to go to come up with a fair Enterprise Agreement.
What has improved?
So far we have:
- Protected employees from unilaterally being transferred to another city or port by adding a requirement that it must be reasonable for Aerocare to do so.
- Made sure members have access to conciliation under the dispute resolution procedure.
- Deleted proposed clause 39 that put employees job security at risk.
These improvements are good but we believe that a better Agreement can be achieved through further negotiations. The ASU has asked for another bargaining meeting in the week leading up to, or the week following, Easter. So far we have had no reply to this request.
How can the Agreement be improved?
The Agreement can be substantially improved by:
- Including casuals in the new Agreement;
- Improving pay rates, the ASU believes pay increases should be at least 5 per annum;
- Properly paying employees overtime and penalty rates; and
- Abandoning split shifts, that the wider community now know leads to employees sleeping on make shift beds or in their cars.
There are many more improvements to the proposed Enterprise Agreement that are needed to meet industry standards. These have all been listed and give to management (check out our website for the list).
Where to from here
The ASU has taken action in the Fair Work Commission to force Aerocare to provide relevant information on the proposed Aerocare Agreement. This will be heard on the 19th April 2017.
Meanwhile members should be on the lookout for Aerocare jumping the gun and putting the Agreement out for a vote even though there is still plenty of negotiations to be done before you get a fair Agreement.
If the agreement is put out for vote it’s our strong recommendation that you vote “NO”.
For more information, please get in touch with the relevant contact. (download the full bulletin below for details)
AeroCare Bulletin - 7 April 2017