Our ASU Jetstar EBA 5 provides for regular consultation at a national level between Jetstar management and ASU delegates and officials. This forum is held quarterly and provides an opportunity to discuss issues that have not been able to be resolved locally or which have a "national" character.
ASU delegates and officials attended the first of these meetings under our new EBA 5 in Melbourne on 17 June 2015. We had a long agenda which included:
- An update on the roll out of Groundstar
- The problems being experienced with the nil 48 roster change provisions in the EBA
- The progress of the team leader selection process
- Promised Long Service leave application guidelines
- The taxing of the EBA back pay
Here is a brief summary of our discussion & what the company has committed to do:
Groundstar
Each of your delegates highlighted the problems that staff have been experiencing with the rollout of phase 1 of Groundstar in some airports. Issues included rostering of full timers on a large numbers of non penalty shifts, the same day off pattern over many weeks, lack of variety in rostered tasks, and the inability to swap shifts unless the shift length swap is for the same period.
The company undertook to come back to us on these issues within 7 days with how the company will address our concerns.
We also discussed phase 2 of the rollout which is the ability for staff to swap roster lines online which is to commence as a trial shortly in Gold Coast. We asked the company reps to clarify whether staff will be able to check the qualifications for work assigned to them online - the company again is to come back to us.
A number of part time staff have raised with us the fact that their annual leave hours on projected rosters are often far less than they usually work which means they suffer financially when on annual leave. In some ports manual adjustments to increase hours had been done prior to Groundstar, this stopped with the new system- not because of anything the ASU said or did but because of Groundstar and the company's poor payroll system - the company is looking at how this can be rectified and will be back to us in a month!
Nil 48
As part of our settlement in EBA 5 Jetstar provided us with a letter signed by Mike Cooper which clarified among other things, the interpretation of the operation of clauses 13.11 in the EBA about the altering of rosters within 48 hours of their start for a staff member (see relevant part of the letter below).In our EBA negotiations only one word was changed in the clause which was "and/or" instead of "and". Nothing was changed in clause 15.8 of the Agreement.
Since the EBA has been approved we have seen the reinterpretation of these provisions across the ports remarkably in different ways to try and dodge the obligation to pay the double time rate that is payable when rosters are changed within 48 hours. Some ports say the clauses only apply to full timers -WRONG, some ports say if you agree you don't get the double time -WRONG and some ports have been paying the double time overtime but may have been categorizing it wrongly in payroll so that the time work does not accrue as ordinary time worked so does not accrue annual leave, sick leave and superannuation. This short changes staff.
There seems to be a reinterpretation of the operation of clause 15.8 of the EBA despite it remaining unchanged.
These issues and more have all been raised at a local level but there are still problems so your delegates & the ASU again raised these problems at our meeting as part of the EBA dispute settling procedure. We have given Jetstar 7 days ( i.e. to COB 25 June) to respond and fix these issues otherwise we will proceed to the next stage of our dispute settling procedure and take the matter to the Fair Work Commission - watch out for details of the Jetstar response next week.
Team leader selection
We understand announcements about this will occur shortly. We got a short briefing on the training being planned for new team leaders taking the roles.
Long service leave applications
It became clear during the EBA negotiations that Jetstar did not have any consistent process in place to deal with long service leave applications, as a result we established during the negotiations that of the 8 staff who had already taken their leave all had been paid incorrectly. We fixed this. Jetstar promised a new process would be in place and directions would be issued to eligible staff about how they could apply for this leave. This does not appear to have been done, Management are checking this and will respond by 25 June about this query.
Taxing of EBA back pay
We believe that the taxing of back pay for our EBA may be wrong, we are still working on this with the company.
What's Next?
The ball is now in the Company's court to respond by 25 June 2015 which they have promised to do. We will report back to members as soon as we get responses, if you have any questions or queries talk to your local delegates and organisers who can clarify what is happening. We urge all members to get their own copy of EBA 5 and the explanatory letters - it is important to know your rights under this EBA.
For more information please contact your ASU delegates or ASU local organiser. (download full bulletin here)
Jetstar Bulletin - 19 June 2015.