Your ASU national negotiating team for Toll Dnata Passenger services last met with the company on 12th February 2015 after a number of delays in finalizing a meeting date. The company representatives came only with a prepared statement about the problems in the company with little ability to negotiate anything but with plenty of excuses about the current state of the finances - none of which, we pointed out, were anything to do with passenger service staff but must wholly be of management’s making.
It could hardly be said that frontline passenger service staff are responsible for recent contract losses in ramp and cargo nor could it ever be said that our wages are not “competitive” given that pay rises have not flowed through to staff for some time as the table below shows:
|
Port |
Last payrise |
EBA Expiry date |
|
Adelaide |
2 Jan 2012 |
19 Feb 2013 |
|
Sydney |
4 June 2012 |
20 October 2013 |
|
Melbourne |
2 January 2013 |
18 August 2013 |
|
Brisbane |
1 July 2013 |
20th October 2014 |
After months of discussions about finalizing one passenger services EBA to cover Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide – the company now does not want to do this –instead they now want to maintain the 4 separate agreements. This is a disappointing development but your negotiating team can see there is no use delaying the finalisation of one agreement if we can get agreement on the payrises and also achieve the same expiry date for all the agreements and a commitment to one agreement next time.
Where are we at?
The current wage offer is not acceptable in your negotiating team’s view. The current offer is for a lump sum payment of 2.75% only for staff employed prior to 1 January 2014 and payable only from their port EBA’s expiry date which as you can see above in most locations is more than 12 months after the next pay rise would have been due. Not having the pay rise on base also disadvantages all staff employed after 1 January 2014 as well as on the company’s offer no payrise for them would be payable until 1 January 2015 ( i.e 1 month ago)
Your negotiating team think that a base rate pay rise for everyone for the past is important. The company delayed negotiations with us saying they had to get their act together and they were not ready etc etc and now they want to penalize passenger services staff for granting their requests for a delay in negotiations.
The staff covered by the Ramp and Cargo EBA got a payrise last year on base pay so we cannot see why passenger service staff should miss out and why employees who started after 1 January 2014 should also not get a pay rise.
We are working on alternative wage propositions to put to the company to cover off all our concerns and we are meeting with the company including Daniela Marsilli on 19th February 2015 to go through the alternatives. We also are conscious that the offer put by the company may well not meet the standards required by the Fair Work commission
What’s next?
We will report back to you after the meeting on 19th February and may well schedule meetings to discuss our next steps – so watch out for details. If you are not already an ASU member you can join online at www.asujoin.asn.au
If you have questions contact your local ASU organizer (download the full bulletin below for details).
Toll Dnata Bulletin #7