ARTC NSW Infrastructure Enterprise Agreement Negotiations 2016 – Update #5

Bulletin 1 – 2017

To:       All RTBU Members: ARTC infrastructure Maintenance:

This Bulletin will report on meetings held on 10/01/2017 and 17/01/2017.

Tuesday 10/01/2017.

The RTBU presented to ARTC management in late 2016, 3 proposals as follows;

• A review of the ARTC competency structure in its entirety to attempt to align with the certificate II and certificate III in Rail Infrastructure from the Industry Skills Council. These qualifications are nationally recognised and used by many companies within the rail industry. (The negotiating team put considerable effort and time into reviewing the whole of the ARTC competency framework to enable this alignment to succeed.)

• An automatic progression for ARTC infrastructure employees covered by this agreement to move through the levels in the classification structure within an agreed timeframe.

• A competency disputes Committee to address member concerns around training and progression issues.

At this stage, apart from the moving of some individual competencies; ARTC MANAGEMENT HAVE NOT AGREED TO ANY OF THE PROPOSALS PUT FORWARD BY THE NEGOTIATING TEAM.

Of particular concern was the ARTC proposal to move core competencies from higher levels to lower ones and the apparent removal of level 4 in the Track stream.

That being said, the RTBU will continue to bargain in good faith with ARTC management around these issues.

Tuesday 17/01/2017.

Matters arising from this meeting are as follows;

• Due to the complexity of the competency system, ARTC have made a commitment to look into the issue of alignment with Certificate II and Certificate III in Rail Infrastructure with the ARTC competencies framework, this may take some time so the next meeting of your EA negotiating team will be on the 31/01/2017.

• This may/may not affect the ARTC position on the removal of level 4 in Track; we will wait for this review.

• ARTC made it crystal clear in response to questions that your delegates put to ARTC management that, BACKPAY WILL NOT BE AN OPTION FOR ARTC EMPLOYEES.

Your negotiations committee will continue to push for the items on our log of claims and ask that if any member is aware that someone is not receiving these bulletins please get them to update their details so we can effectively communicate with everyone at this time.

Finally a reminder that the contact details for your Infrastructure Organisers are below:

Luke Hayden                                                                           Jonathan Parker

lhayden@rtbu-nsw.asn.au                                                      infrastructure@rtbu-nsw.asn.au

0499 710 707                                                                          0418 166 742