Pacific National – North Sydney IPS

Bulletin: 51/19

To: Rail, Tram and Bus Union – Pacific National – North Sydney IPS Members,

Pacific National – North Sydney IPS

Welcome to our new members from Pacific National (PN) North Sydney. We understand you have expressed an interest in establishing enterprise agreement (EA) coverage for your area. This can be a long and difficult process, depending on the employer.

You may not be aware that when PN set up IPS, they utilised a deliberate corporate strategy to exclude IPS employees from EA coverage. There were EA’s in place at the time that would have (and should have) covered IPS employees; however PN used every sneaky legal loop to exclude IPS from coverage.

While the Pacific National Bulk Rail Enterprise Agreement (Bulk Agreement) has wages and conditions for support employees that accurately reflect industry standards, Pacific National pay IPS employees under the Rail Industry Award 2010 which contains minimum wages and conditions. For example, Coordinators at level 2.4 under the Bulk Agreement are paid a base wage of $123,503.25 per annum. In addition, they are also paid shift penalties, holiday loadings, and public holidays.  Overtime is paid at time and a half for the first three hours, then double time after that.

As you can see, employees under the Bulk Agreement are far better off than those who work at IPS. This is a situation that is not fair and should not stand.

The answer is to negotiate an EA for IPS workers. However PN refuses to negotiate. There is a way to force them to the table though, and this is through a Majority Support Determination (MSD) in the Fair Work Commission. To do this, workers need to act as a collective and join the union. It will require a concerted effort by all members to get a MSD over the line. Current members need to encourage other employees to join the RTBU so we can make this happen.  Members should talk to their fellow workers, send them a copy of this email, and discuss the benefits of an enterprise agreement.

The RTBU will be holding briefings to discuss what is required to get a MSD and how to organise your workplace. We will also conduct some site visits to the IPS to talk to members during their breaks.

We look forward to meeting you all and discussing how we can progress an EA.

Our information sessions are:

NSW Bulk Agreement excerpt of pay rates.

To join, contact our membership services team on (02) 9264 2511 or email at nswho@rtbu-nsw.asn.au.