Our current Emirates agreement expires on 31st December 2013 and while it might seem a long way off it is never too early to start getting ready for the next round of bargaining, so shortly your union, the Australian Services Union (ASU) will be distributing a survey designed to determine what claims we should be making on behalf of members for the new agreement.
Who is the ASU
The ASU is the largest airlines union in Australia.
We have members in domestic, regional and international airlines, ground handlers, aviation contractors and contact centres.
We are the experts representing staff in guest services, customer service, administration, finance, marketing, IT, sales and marketing, cargo, contact centres and in a range of other important areas.
How does bargaining work?
The ASU will be negotiating the new agreement for our members under the Fair Work Act just like last time.
Under the Fair Work Act, Emirates is required to provide all employees who are to be covered by the proposed agreement with a letter outlining your rights – this is known as the Notice of Bargaining. This notice formally signals the start of bargaining.
Negotiators of agreements are called "bargaining representatives" under the Fair Work Act.
Members of the ASU do not have to do anything about the appointment of a bargaining representative as the ASU automatically represents members.
The ASU will form a National Negotiating Team (NNT) made up of delegates and officials to conduct the negotiations for ASU members as we did for the last agreement.
Emirates management have signalled they want to start bargaining early so we expect the notice of bargaining to be sent out in a couple of months time.
What do we want in the new agreement?
The agreement will cover staff in all Emirates Offices and airports including the licensed engineers.
To best establish what issues are important to staff the ASU will be conducting a survey. We will collect the results and report back about the most popular responses which will form the claims that you want to make for the new agreement. Once we have done that we provide our claims to the company and start bargaining.
Working together
During negotiations it is incredibly important that all areas work together and have an ASU representative on the National Negotiating Team so we can coordinate our claims and work together. That worked really well during the last agreement and it will work well again if we get organised and get ready.
Time to join the ASU
If you're not a member of the ASU, you can join online now at our secure form: https://asujoin.asn.au/
Need more information?
For more information, please get in touch with the relevant contact [download the full bulletin for the contact list].
Download the full Emirates Bulletin - 15 May 2013