EA Bargaining Meeting #4

17 July 2024

Dear Members,

We continued bargaining today and first up, we presented our majority support petition to management to demonstrate that we’re united on our claim for a multi enterprise agreement. It was a striking image having over 6,000 votes physically presented to the rail entities. If you haven’t seen it yet, have a look on Facebook at our video.

The answer to our claim for a multi enterprise agreement, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of majority support, was an emphatic NO.

The parallels between now and the last bargain are striking. Last bargaining round, we were forced to take industrial action to support the agreement type we wanted. And this round, we’re going to have to do the same thing- take action to achieve what should be simply agreed.

We will be imminently filing a protected action ballot, so please make sure your details are up to date with our office – you can send a simple email to nswho@rtbu-nsw.asn.au with your new details.

The rest of the day was taken up by going through the log of claims and figuring out what can and can’t be agreed to by the management of the rail agencies, and those that can only be agreed to by Government decision makers. The claims discussed were as follows:

1.     Average pay for emergency response leave – our claim is to ensure people aren’t financially disadvantaged when they engage in emergency response work.

2.     Average pay for disaster leave – once again, our claim is to ensure that people aren’t financially disadvantaged when they are involved in a disaster (natural or pandemic).

3.     Flexible working arrangements not to be unreasonably refused – we argued this claim in the context of repeated refusals over the years by management to accept requests for flexibility by members.

4.     Increase parental leave for both parents to 26 weeks – we argued that parental leave should be increased to 26 weeks for both parents. We also argued that seniority shouldn’t freeze when on maternity leave, which management agreed to.

In unity, 

RTBU NSW