It’s Crunch Time

Bulletin 22 – 2017

To: Infrastructure Division Members – ARTC, 

Starting today, Monday, 19^th June 2017 until Thursday, 23rd June 2017 you will be given the opportunity to make your voice heard as the voting period will open for the ARTC NSW Infrastructure Maintenance Enterprise Agreement 2017.

This week, you will be voting on the following;

• A National Qualification in Rail Infrastructure;
• Automatic Progression to Level 2 within 2 years from the start of your employment;
• A 6% Increase to On-Call and LAHA, which you don’t get until 2019;
• A 2% Increase per year on your wages with no back pay;
• The removal of the ‘Trade Union’ clause from the enterprise agreement, weakening yours and your local delegates power in the workplace;
• The addition of an ‘Individual Flexibility Arrangement’ clause that will give ARTC the power to enter into discussions with employees to change their conditions on Overtime, Penalty Rates, Allowances, Remuneration, Leave and Leave Loading;
• No improvements to ARTC’s Leave Policy or the EA to adopt or incorporate Domestic/Family Violence Leave for Victims of said violence;

As all previous union updates have shown, ARTC has been an extremely difficult bargaining party in these negotiations. They continuously hid behind the Workplace Bargaining Policy (the Policy) which hindered having unrestricted and open discussions between your representatives and management.

Time and time again ARTC management were reminded that there are provisions within the Policy that allows ARTC to offer improvements to working conditions above what the Policy allows and time and time again, they refused to acknowledge it.

This is the same ARTC management who have conducted a road show over the past couple of weeks using scare tactics like “If you don’t vote this up everything is off the table”.

It’s crunch time, so show them that you mean business and won’t be bullied into accepting an enterprise agreement that doesn’t offer you sufficient and fair improvements to your working conditions, which you and we know, they can afford.

You will never know what you can achieve until you fight for it!