Bank Holiday Entitlement on New Year’s Eve

Bulletin 53, 2016 –

To: All Sydney Trains RTBU Members,

It is an entitlement under your Enterprise Agreement that in addition to the NSW nominated Public Holidays you also get an extra day in lieu of a Bank Holiday without loss of pay.  The Enterprise Agreement specifies that this extra day is taken on New Year’s Eve.

But what happens this year when New Year’s Eve falls on a Saturday (and many of our members don’t normally work on a Saturday)?

Sydney Trains has agreed that the Bank Holiday can be taken on Friday, 30 December 2016, so that Monday to Friday workers will not miss out on the extra day’s holiday.  However, they decided that if you are required to work on a Friday you will not get paid the public holiday penalties as specified in Clause 29.5 of the Enterprise Agreement.

On realising this was a potential breach of your hard won terms and conditions of employment a quick thinking RTBU delegate raised this at once with the RTBU Office.

Your Organisers immediately put this into dispute and entered into serious discussion with Sydney Trains.

The result?  Disaster averted and entitlement restored!

Any member who is a Monday to Friday worker and is required to work on Friday, 30 December 2016 can now be paid and/or accrue the day in accordance with clause 29.5 of the Sydney Trains Enterprise Agreement 2014 for working a Public Holiday.

For seven-day shift workers who usually work weekends, Saturday, 31 December 2016 will remain as the day in lieu of the Bank Holiday (as is historically the case) and the proper public holiday penalty payment and time accrual arrangements will apply.

Without the action of one of our RTBU delegates the office would not have known there was an issue that needed to be fixed.  This Christmas we should all give our RTBU delegates a big extra ‘Thank You’ for the hard work they do on our behalf.