Water & Ports

Industrial Commission Orders NO Industrial Action for 3 Months

Details

Published on Monday, 07 July, 2008

ASU members in civil maintenance have been ordered to refrain from all forms of industrial action until midnight 28 July 2008.

The orders are a response to members banning management’s requirement that they cross into other production areas to carry out their work.

Civil Maintenance management allocate work from 9 production areas that cover all of Sydney Water’s area of coverage. Until recently members were only required to work in their own production area, allowing them to build up strong local knowledge as well as keeping them close to important equipment. The arrangement also kept members close to the facilities in their local depot such as showers, dining rooms and toilets (bearing in mind that our members are often contaminated by raw human sewage and trade waste: read refuse from industry).

Management are now requiring members to ‘cross boundary areas’, into other production areas. Such a change means that members can no longer call on their local knowledge to perform their work efficiently, and this creates a potential danger as members have no idea which neighbourhoods may be more risky than others. In addition to being asked to work in foreign areas, members no longer have local access to the important facilities outlined above: meaning they can be hours away from a shower while being covered in human sewage.

As a result of these concerns, members banned the ‘crossing of boundary areas’. This ban stayed in place for more than a year until the IRC’s recent orders requiring the ban to be lifted. Members voted to comply with these orders. Members still believe strongly that the crossing of boundaries represents a risk to their health and safety and will continue to seek improvements to the work practice through a committee set up for this purpose called the Shift Monitoring Committee.