PN Bulk EA: Bargaining Preparation and Log of Claims Update

Before Greater Sydney went into lockdown the Locomotive Division brought Delegates from PN Bulk and Coal together for an intensive two-day preparation for your upcoming Enterprise Agreement negotiations.

The logistics of getting Delegates together from far and wide was challenging, but the result of your Enterprise Bargaining team developing a plan for the upcoming bargaining period, was well worth it.

We also used the opportunity to review the survey responses gathered from members and started to develop our Log of Claims which will be tabled when endorsed by members and negotiations commence.

The top three issues were identified both by Delegates and in the EA survey results are:

Labour Hire Equality/Casualisation
Dispute Resolution with Arbitration Rights
A wage increase

These were followed very closely by Fatigue and Rostering with 80% of employees stating they were either extremely dissatisfied or dissatisfied with current fatigue and Rostering provisions.

Disciplinary action (particularly around SPADS), an all-inclusive wage, meal breaks, and technology protections were also rated as a major concern by the membership.

Throughout our session we started to develop a draft log of claims and a plan for members to endorse the claim through a series of depot meetings. Unfortunately, due to the restrictions currently in place in NSW those plans have been put on hold.

Delegates have continued to work on developing your Log of Claims through online meetings and regardless of restrictions will develop a plan to make sure the members can endorse the Log of Claims and what we will be fighting for through this round of negotiations.

At the time of writing PN management have written to the RTBU seeking preliminary discussions early next week. We will let you know how this goes.

The ever changing nature of lockdowns and the Covid-19 pandemic will have an impact on how the negotiations take place. But despite these barriers the RTBU Locomotive Division and your Delegates have continued to progress negotiations and will do everything we can to make sure we can negotiate for a better deal for members at PN

If you have any questions, please speak to your local delegate.

Stay safe everyone.

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