ASU keeps on fighting for fair and safe roster

Your ASU National Negotiating Team met with Qantas to continue negotiating your next enterprise agreement.

ASU has been pushing for fairer rostering arrangements that give members predictability and certainty. The negotiations are progressing slowly but we have finally been able to make some progress in getting Qantas to see that it has to make improvements here. In particular:

• Qantas have now agreed to return to holding local roster committees and sharing the master roster with your representatives. The detail still needs to be worked through, including Qantas committing to a timeframe for this, as members have lived through unpredictable and ever-changing rosters for 2.5 years and need certainty now.
• Qantas have agreed in principle to the ASU proposal to get more hours rostered for part time workers who want them by having two work groups – those that want to work close to minimum hours, and those that want to be rostered more hours. ASU will work through the detail on this and come back to members with more information in the coming weeks.

Disappointingly, Qantas have still not (yet) budged on number of ASU claims that would improve your work/life balance such as:

• Rosters to be published 6 weeks in advance,
• Forward-facing rosters,
• No extreme changes,
• Changes within 7 days only by agreement.

Of course, your national negotiating team will keep pushing!

ASU members deserve job security

This week your ASU national negotiating team also presented to management on how important job security is to members, and shared the feedback we have received from members that Qantas need to commit to the security of your jobs by committing to employ their workers directly, giving as many hours as possible to their own staff (and not labour hire) and committing to no compulsory redundancies. It has been an incredibly difficult few years for members and the absolute least Qantas can do is repay your hard work and loyalty by giving you some job security. Qantas have agreed to consider our claim and come back to us – we will keep members up to date with developments.

It's time to improve parental leave

Qantas’ parental leave  provisions are stuck in the dark ages. It’s time for Qantas to step up and improve the parental leave you’re entitled to. ASU has made a claim for 26 weeks paid parental leave for new parents, and for superannuation to be paid on all parental leave. We have sought a response from Qantas on this in our next meeting.

Qantas dodgy roster ‘bidding’ and ‘flexible full time’ claims

Also this week the ASU told Qantas that we reject their claims:

• Qantas wanted to make changes related to the bidding system that the Airline is proposing. The feedback members gave was that in the areas where it has been trialled, it was difficult, if not near impossible to do shift swaps, and it resulted in people getting too much or too little weekend work. Ultimately, we cannot agree to change or remove entitlements for a system that gives more control to Qantas.
• Qantas’ proposal to change full time work to ‘flexible full time’ work – its unfair to have workers receiving single dollars for 12-hour shifts, it is too difficult to shift swap, and will create a third class of employees.

We have negotiating meetings scheduled every week for the next month and will keep members up to date with developments.

Now is the time to join the ASU – if you are not already a member you can join here: www.asu.asn.au/asujoin. If you are already a member, ask a colleague to join! If you require any support or additional information, please contact your local ASU delegates or ASU organiser at: