Rail Entities Table Outstanding Clauses and Delegates State Members Position

On Wednesday, 30 April 2014 the rail entities provided final drafts of the clauses they are seeking to change in addition to seeking to remove clauses 47. Voluntary Redundancy and 26. Salary Maintenance and the insertion of a “facilitative clause”.  Now the rail entities have tabled all their claims the CRU has undertaken to provide a response to each claim.

To ensure the responses reflect the position of members the CRU requested the delegates briefing be brought forward to Tuesday, 13 May 2014 to enable direct consultation with delegates about each reform.  At the briefing the CRU will outline and provide an analysis of each reform proposal and seek the views of delegates. The rail entities have agreed to move the meeting forward.

Delegates Deliver Message To Management

At today’s meeting the CRU asked delegates to respond to a question from the rail entities regarding “what is the feeling about where we are at in relation to a new agreement”.  Delegates from each union spoke honestly and passionately on behalf of their work colleagues.  They told management that employees had in many instances given their life to the railways and now there was a sense of discontent across the workforce as a result of the way they had been treated, the debilitating experience of endless reform processes, the insinuation contained in the current rhetoric around “customer service” that people weren’t doing their job and the failure to share any of the savings from reforms with the workforce and at this point the “package” is not what they are looking for.

Capturing Savings Already Made By Rail Entities

The CRU once again raised this issue and is writing to the rail entities requesting they table all the savings made from reforms in addition to those contemplated by the 2010 RailCorp EA.  To date the rail entities have not provided any detail with respect to the savings achieved from various reforms.  The CRU will provide the response from the rail entities as soon as it is received.

Next Steps

As a result of today’s meeting the rail entities have agreed to the CRU’s request to revise the meeting schedule over the coming weeks to the following:

1. Thursday, 8 and Friday, 9 May 2014 CRU caucus to consider all of the claims tabled by the rail entities and assess their implications on current working conditions.
2. Tuesday, 13 May 2014 new date for delegates briefing.
3. Tuesday, 20 May 2014 CRU will meet with the rail entities to provide a response to all claims based on feedback from delegates briefing.
4. Workplace briefings will commence after Tuesday, 20 May 2014 to update members on the status of discussions with the rail entities.