Update on the first week of the Rail Entities Roadshow
As you know, management began their roadshow tour this week, travelling around depots across the state to present you with their latest offer.
We’ve been there to address the second half of every meeting, to ensure that your voices are heard and to answer any questions you may have. We will continue this format at every roadshow meeting.
A version of their roadshow tour has today been circulated, which you can view here.
If you have any questions about this, please contact your local delegate, or call the RTBU NSW Office on 02 9264 2511
What to expect:
Sydney Trains management have opened the roadshow meetings at each depot by presenting the offer and hearing initial feedback from workers. After the opening presentation, management have been vacating the meeting to allow Union representatives to explain the offer in further detail and consult with workers.
All items in the latest offer meet what your negotiating team have been fighting for, with exception of four items. The four items which we do not have a full agreement on, are as follows:
• Pay – Delegates overwhelmingly voted in favour of no less than 4% per annum for the wage increase. Management have only offered a 3% wage increase per annum as a part of the package. Management also initially asserted that the entire package equates to 4.06%. However, we have engaged an independent economist to fact-check these figures, who has estimated that the whole package is worth closer to 3.75% rather than 4.06% unless you are an individual who will use the travel pass more frequently
• Clause 12 – facilitation clause – the wording around this clause has been significantly improved, but we were unable to achieve a final position on this item
• Redeployment and redundancy – significant improvement has been made on this item, but we were unable to achieve access to the dispute settlement procedure for first 3 months of Implementation Period
• Discipline clause – again, improvements have been made to this clause where we now have payment above base pay, but we have been unable to achieve the union’s position on average earnings over the previous 12-month period.
Thanks to the hard work of our negotiating team and delegates, we have come a long way towards the agreement we have been asking for.
Members are reminded that the agreement being presented by management is not agreed to and or endorsed by the RTBU.
During this week’s presentations, members have raised a number of concerns with the Rail Entities about their offer.
We encourage everyone to come along and discuss the current offer with management and your union and hope to see you there.
We will send more information as it comes to hand.
In Solidarity,
Your RTBU team.