ARTC EA Update – Industrial Action Update

Members across the state have over the past two days stood together to send the ARTC a strong clear message that they are not happy with ARTC continuing to hide behind the Federal Government’s Workplace Bargaining Policy, nor are they happy with ARTC’s latest reduced offer. On Wednesday most Hunter Valley Coal trains were cancelled, today members across the state walked out for two hours and tomorrow at 7am the back to back 24 hour state wide stoppages will commence as planned.

As previously advised, one of the lawful and protected industrial actions currently available to members of the Combined Unions at ARTC (that is, members of Professionals Australia, the RTBU, the ASU and the ETU) is to include an “authorised statement” into all outgoing emails, auto-reply email messages and telephone voicemail.

The “authorised statement” in emails and voicemail helps to communicate concerns about the latest version of the ARTC NSW Enterprise Agreement (NSW EA), which is a reduced version of the EA voted down by employees in December 2015. We are strongly recommending all employees vote “no” to ARTC’s latest version of the NSW EA.

The “authorised statement” is as follows:

“VOTE NO to the ARTC NSW Enterprise Agreement!

We are calling on ARTC to genuinely negotiate with employees to reach agreement on a fair and reasonable Enterprise Agreement (EA), rather than offering a worse deal than that voted down in 2015.

Along with my colleagues at ARTC NSW, I am participating in lawful and protected industrial action in order to seek that ARTC protect important conditions in our EA, provide equitable entitlements, fair pay increases, and take steps to address safety and EA compliance issues now.”

All members who have company email are encouraged to use the authorised statement in their emails and voicemail.

To use the authorised statement in accordance with our protected action, members should add the authorised statement into your email signature and out-of-office autoreply (if you use one). Read the statement onto your voicemail.

Note that you may add text prior to or following the statement (eg mentioning your name and title at the beginning of your voicemail message) however please don’t change the statement as the exact wording forms part of the industrial action.

Read the full bulletin here.