STA Salaried Staff Cuts

Bulletin 52, 2016

To: RTBU STA Senior and Salaried Staff Union Members,

Today STA CEO Peter Rowley met with RTBU Union representatives to tell us that STA has been successful in negotiating new contracts for another 5 years to provide a public bus service to the people of Sydney. Any announcement that keeps Public Services in Public hands is good news!

This announcement however does not come without any strings attached. The contracts have a funding reduction written into them!!

Two reports have indicated that STA is more expensive that private industry and must change its operating model to that of a more “service delivery” focus to achieve savings of at least 10%. Mr Rowley says these savings will be achieved through a number of incentives including reducing the number of his own executive officers, but most importantly and sadly for the RTBU it also means that there will be a reduction of 30% of senior and salaried officer positions across the organisation. This is a loss of approximately 130 – 150 positions and demonstrates yet again the short-sightedness of this government when it comes to the provision of public transport.

We have been assured that each GM will engage in genuine consultation with their staff to address issues of work redesign, work flow, position descriptions and organisational change in order to make savings.

At the end of January your Union reps will meet again with the executive officers of STA in a joint consultative committee to work through the final draft organisation plan, which will then go out for final consultation to all of you. The transition period to the new structure will be from July to November next year with full implementation by the end of November 2017.

We want job reductions to be achieved through voluntary redundancies only, where members who want to leave are able to do so, with all their entitlements and redundancy pay, and those who want a job are able to keep working. Your RTBU representatives will be working very hard to make this happen within the Government policy framework. The first step is to find out who’s interested in taking a voluntary redundancy by an Expression of Interest. The next step is for members to engage in the process by providing all your thoughts, ideas, feedback to the email address yourfeedback@sta.nsw.gov.au  Your RTBU Reps will have access to this feedback so that we can make sure all your issues are addressed fairly, squarely and equitably.  Look out for our bulletins to keep up to date on developments and contact us if you have questions.