Water & Ports
Protecting Redundancy And Job Security At Sydney Water
- Details
- Published on Friday, 30 January, 2009
Did you know that your redundancy and redeployment rights can be taken away with the stroke of a pen? Should a Government – current or future – decide they want to cheaply shed staff they could direct Sydney Water to reduce your entitlement from a maximum of 52 weeks for employees who commenced after 1 March 2008 and 120 weeks for employees who commenced prior to 1 March 2008 to just 16 weeks, overnight, without your agreement!
This is because your current entitlements are not in a legally enforceable agreement, but are only in policy.
Times have changed – we can no longer afford to put such important entitlements at risk. We have a Global Economic Crisis, Governments want to save money and outsource, and there is likely to be a change of Government in two years.
Protecting our jobs
In the current climate of economic uncertainty redundancies are a serious threat for all workers. Now, more than ever, this significant entitlement needs to be included in the new Agreement.
If shedding jobs comes at significant costs, organisations have to weigh this up carefully before outsourcing or restructuring. Good redundancy packages and redeployment conditions are our best job security.
It’s only fair that all your conditions are negotiated, agreed upon, understood and spelt out in black and white in your Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. That way they can’t be changed whenever Peter Mills, Sydney Water, the current State Government or an incoming Liberal Government feel like it.
Case Study: For new starters since March 1 2008, redundancy entitlements are now capped at 52 weeks, when they were previously capped at 120 weeks – that’s a cut of over 50%! Further, Sydney Water begins reducing redundancy entitlements for employees who have been in “unallocated redeployment” for a period of 6 months. For these employees, redundancy entitlements continue to decrease each week until they have been in “unallocated redeployment” for 12 months, at which point you are terminated! And they only got away with it because Redundancy and Redeployment isn’t an agreed term of the Agreement. If it were, they could only change it with our agreement.
|
Securing a better Agreement
To achieve a better Agreement and include important policies such as Redundancy we need to be strong and stick together. Three things you can do are:
1. If you’re not yet a member of the ASU, ask a union delegate for a membership form or contact the ASU office.
2. Talk to your colleagues, delegates and EBA Campaign Committee members (details on the ASU website) about what you think is a fair deal.
3. Participate in the ASU survey to help build our log of claims – this will be coming out soon.
Download a pdf version of this bulletin.
