It's all happening at Maurice Blackburn

Your ASU National Negotiating Team (NNT) met face to face with the firm’s negotiators for the first time on 7^th & 8^th December 2015 in Melbourne. This was our fourth meeting and it was great to have the whole team together in the room.

Bargaining update

We have had meetings with the company representatives about the new agreement on the 15^th December 2015, 28^th January 2016 and face to face on the 9^th February 2016.

Progress is slow the company maintains its opposition to a number of our claims including a better flexible work provision, access to TOIL, RDOs, wellbeing leave, better lunchrooms and car parking.

That said we have made some progress on our claims about access to family violence leave, swap pay for leave policy and half pay for parental leave over a long period. We are also negotiating the trainee Lawyer clause but it must be in the EBA not just in policy.

On the 9^th February 2016 we had a presentation from Board member Peter Koutsoukis and Neil Mackay (CFO) about Maurice Blackburn and the environment the firm is operating in. We were told that the firm is in the midst of a transition to a new more “scientific” pay structure. Unfortunately the firm would not give much detail on what this is.

Eventually the bargaining representatives gave us some insight as to the differences in pay rises that occurred last year and we will be discussing this information in our upcoming meeting of members.

We have also received some detailed claims from the firm including a proposed new grievance/dispute setting procedure. The proposed clause is significantly inferior to the current agreement clause and definitely not best practice. If you want to see the proposal ask your delegate.  

Consultative committee update

We held our first consultative committee meeting under the current agreement on 28^th January 2016.

The firm eventually agreed that they had to discuss their proposed new bonus scheme with your ASU reps and told us in December that this would happen at the consultative committee meeting.

It didn’t … the rollout of the new scheme for 4^th year lawyers and above has been delayed, we expect to get details of the proposal at our next meeting on 23^rd February 2016, together with the firm’s proposed disciplinary investigation procedure.

Overwhelming response to survey

We got a fantastic response to our survey about flexible work arrangements, study leave and overtime. With 290 responses in 2 weeks from every office and across sections of staff, your feedback is invaluable to your negotiating team. We are putting together a summary of what you told us on these issues and also making contact with some individuals about the issues they raised. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Show me the money

We still have some way to go in negotiations about the EBA conditions we are claiming and we intend to hold meetings of members before our next meeting to fully update members about our progress.

We also want to have detailed discussions about bonuses and to get some direction from members.

The firm says they will have a response to our “money” issues for our meeting on 26^th February 2016.

The money issues that have been probed are not just the pay rise but also our claims for increased parental leave, days off etc.

We will discuss our communication about this also at our forth coming meetings.

Whats next?

Make sure you attend a local meeting with your ASU delegate, organisers and negotiating team – watch out for details.

Got questions?