The ASU National Negotiating team met with Qantas for our 9^th meeting on the 19^th August. At that meeting Qantas finally presented more detail on their claims. Your NNT are very cautious about what has been proposed; from cashing out of annual leave to the increased use of temporary employees.

Qantas’ ‘flexibility’ comes at the expense of a permanent workforce and work-life balance.

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.

 The ASU National negotiating team met with Qantas representatives on Wednesday 4 August for Round 8 of negotiations for EBA 9.

At this meeting, in typical style, Qantas targeted our wages trying to say Virgin Blue staff at airports are paid 12% less than Qantas staff at airports. They say that has to be taken into account for all of the almost 8,000 people covered by our ASU EBA.

The company refused to say what wage outcome they wanted, save to say they have to be competitive - whatever that means?  Clearly they are OK with their managers being paid more than Virgin Blue managers, but apparently not anyone else.

The Australian Services Union together with Ryde Family Support Services invites all social, community and disability workers in the Bennelong electorate to hear Maxine McKew speak about Equal Pay for Social and Community Services workers.

When: 4:00 – 4:30pm Tuesday 10th August

Where: Ryde Family Support Services, 1 Clanalpine Street, Eastwood

RSVP: Gabe Kavanagh, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

All community workers and supporters are welcome

With just over 2 weeks to go we still have no IR policy release from the Coalition. To read what the ACTU has to say about this click here:

http://www.actu.org.au/Media/Mediareleases/TimeforTonyAbbotttotellAustraliansthetruthWhereishisIRpolicy.aspx

Recently the ASU has become aware of Sydney Water attempting to use a variety of different methods to force members to take Annual Leave and reduce their accrued leave balances.

The NSW Opposition Leader, Barry O’Farrell has announced his intention to radically re-write the NSW Planning Act to open up NSW for greater competition for the private provision of public services. Mr. O’Farrell has indicated his desire for billions of dollars worth of public services to be offered to the private sector if he is elected Premier at the March 2011 election. He will start with Sydney Ferries and the Desalination Plant.

You can  see the full article here: http://www/asumembers.org.au/downloads/Water/Fin Review - O'Farrell 2 July 10.pdf

Civil Maintenance workers at Sydney Water have been paid the same classification since 1991. These rates were locked into successive Awards and Agreements and have not been reviewed in the 19 years they have existed. Most jobs in Sydney Water are evaluated from time to time to take into account the things like the introduction of new tasks or technology. Sometimes the classification goes up, other times down, depending on the effect the change has on the work value of the job.

 Members have voted by over 96% for industrial action. Your campaign committee has endorsed a series of escalating actions to put ongoing pressure on RailCorp and the Government.

The first actions have been designed to minimise disruption on the travelling public. We want the public to understand that we are only taking action because the Government and RailCorp have forced us into this position.