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Published on Friday, 13 August, 2010

NCR have told the ASU and Customer Engineers that they do not intend to continue to negotiate a replacement agreement following the conclusion of the no vote on the last draft. We say that is not bargaining in good faith and the ASU has applied to Fair Work Australia (FWA) for Good Faith Bargaining Orders.

What are Bargaining Orders?

The Fair Work Act allows one of the parties who are bargaining to make an application to FWA because the other is not bargaining in good faith. Good faith means a range of things including: the bargaining representatives need to meet and they need to give genuine consideration to all the claims. Good Faith Bargaining Orders do not force anyone to agree to anything.

Fair Work Australia

The ASU made an application to Fair Work Australia (FWA) seeking Good Faith Bargaining Orders. This application has had an initial hearing in Sydney on Thursday 29 July 2010. FWA have given NCR a week to provide more evidence to support their belief that they can just say no to bargaining (06/08/10) and the ASU will then have a week to respond. The ASU has to reply to FWA by the 13th August 2010. FWA will then make a decision on whether to support the ASU application and issue orders NCR to bargain in good faith.

What has NCR said?

NCR says they are not bargaining and they have no intention of bargaining. Then they tell us and FWA that they are bargaining in Western Australia. NCR also suggested to the ASU that if we wanted to force NCR to bargain that we should take industrial action. These are quite extraordinary things to say and industrial action is something that ASU members may just have to seriously consider.

What the ASU says!

The ASU says, we are bargaining, we have been attempting to reach agreement for a long time. This is hard but it is bargaining. ASU Delegates and members have been very clear in their determination to pursue NCR to seek an agreement for all CE's in a fair and equitable national agreement.