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CEPU Bulletins
Telstra general
01/12/2009 E-Bulletin #23 - Telstra EA update: dispute not yet resolved 1. Telstra EA update: dispute not yet resolved 2. Broadcast Australia employees reject EA 3. Silcar re-ballot 4. Cleaning up Telstra exchanges and facilities 5. Telstra to increase Part Private Use charges 6. M2 Commander shut down 7. HFC, wireless futures pose NBN challenge 8. Big Brother awards 2009 9. Win by CEPU members puts unfair contracts in spotlight 10. Pay equity: report recommends stronger measures 11. Union movement calls for inquiry on job security 12. Campaign for stronger OHS laws continues 13. BT Openreach employees vote “YES” to job security deal 14. Chinese mine disaster: labour and globalisation. 1. Telstra EA update: dispute not yet resolved Unfortunately the long running dispute to achieve an acceptable EA in Telstra is not yet resolved. Whilst we have made progress in the talks, Telstra management’s stand on the pay rises on offer is simply not adequate in the circumstances. In all the consultation with members around the country, members overwhelmingly told us that the negotiations needed to do better regarding the money outcomes. Membership consultation has been ramped up in recent weeks and has included face-to-face meetings, surveys, telephone conferences, one-on-one discussions, work centre visits and other feedback. The very widespread view of the membership in Telstra is that the current proposal should be rejected as inadequate and unfair in the circumstances and that the union should continue its efforts for a better deal. The CEPU has advised Telstra management of our members’ views which the National Divisional Executive of the union has formally endorsed. Members are being followed up regarding their role in taking action to try and win a better EA outcome. 2. Broadcast Australia employees reject EA Employees at Broadcast Australia have voted down the company’s Enterprise Agreement offer. Employees registered an overwhelming “NO” vote to an agreement which had not been endorsed by the CEPU and which failed to address a number of employee issues. As reported in E-bulletin #22, these issues had been the subject of several months of negotiations and should, in the union’s view, have been resolved before the proposed agreement was put out to a vote. Broadcast Australia, however, chose to act unilaterally in taking the EA to ballot. CEPU members and other employees have responded by sending a clear message to the company about their approach. It is to be hoped that Broadcast Australia will now sit down again with the CEPU with a view to reaching an agreement that is acceptable to its employees. 3. Silcar re-ballot Silcar employees will soon be asked for the third time to approve a new Enterprise Agreement. To date, employees at the company have twice rejected a proposed EA. The most recent version has been negotiated by a team including both the CEPU and a number of other employee representatives. The new agreement is for three years instead of four and delivers three rises of 4% per annum plus a one-off payment equivalent to four months pay (including normal penalties). The agreement will take effect from the date it is approved i.e. the closing date of a successful ballot. The new agreement is currently before the Communications Division Executive for endorsement with the ballot expected to open in the second week of December. 4. Cleaning up Telstra exchanges and facilities The CEPU has been advised by members that employees are being invited to participate in cleaning up Telstra exchanges and facilities. Many exchanges are filthy and the contract cleaners in some cases only empty bins in eating areas and replace soap and paper. Virtually no cleaning is carried out. Now we have the spectacle of senior management requesting volunteers to bring their own lawnmowers on weekends and to use their families to help. Telstra will provide a BBQ to top it off. At a time when employees are in the middle of EA negotiations, this request will incense members. How will your family be covered should they volunteer for this weekend work and they have an accident? The whole exercise suggests how out of touch Telstra management is with its employees. 5. Telstra to increase Part Private Use charges Telstra has advised the CEPU that it intends to raise the employee charges for Part Private Use (PPU) of Telstra vehicles. On the basis of its latest review of PPU costs, Telstra is proposing new employee contribution rates to be effective from 7th January next year. The rates will be: PP1- (cars) from $137 to $171 per fortnight PP2- (vans) from $170 to $190 per fortnight. Telstra says it will now begin a consultation with employees on PPU arrangements to see whether they want to stay on the PPU scheme or move to Commuter vehicle usage. 6. M2 Commander Christmas shut down Branches are reporting that the new Commander company M2 is attempting to force employees to take leave over the Christmas period. This would be an effective shut down from 24th December 2009 up to and including 8th January 2010. There are no provisions in the old Commander Agreement that permits the employer to force employees to take ARL against their will during a Christmas shut down. Section 88 of the Fair Work Act states “Paid annual leave may be taken for a period agreed between an employee and his or her employer”. Members should contact their State Branch if they are having difficulties in this regard. 7. HFC, wireless pose NBN challenge The pace of technological developments in the telecommunication industry is beginning to raise questions about the role the proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) will play in the future national broadband market. Earlier this month, both Telstra and Optus announced upgrades to their HFC networks to the DOCSIS 3 standard which enables download speeds of 100Mbps – the NBN benchmark. The Telstra service, which will be initially offered only in Melbourne, will be available from 1 December and will provide a 2 Mbps upstream connection. Optus has announced an upgrade in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane but has not yet released any timetable or pricing details. The Optus network passes 2.4 million homes of which only 1.4 million are considered by the company to be “serviceable”. This represents a sizeable chunk of the broadband market, but leaves room for NBN Co. But should Telstra upgrade the rest of its national HFC network, it would mean that some 3 million homes – about one third of the NBN’s proposed coverage – would be served by high speed broadband and without any need for Government funding. It would also mean that NBN Co would have to share the most profitable section of the national market with one and in some areas two other providers. With the economics of the NBN proposal already being called into question from a number of sources, these moves pose new challenges to Government policy. Meanwhile, a report from Goldman Sachs has highlighted the growing role of wireless, particularly mobiles, in broadband delivery. Analysts from the investment house say they have been forced to revise their estimates of wireless broadband growth because of the phenomenal rate of take-up the Australian market is experiencing. They found that in the six months to June this year, new wireless broadband customers outnumbered new wireline broadband customers by eight to one. Fixed broadband growth was barely positive. These numbers pose further challenges to the Government’s NBN strategy. At the same time they highlight the importance to Telstra of an NBN deal with the Government which guarantees the company access to new spectrum in future. Provided the price is right, Telstra may well hand over its copper – or the traffic that is currently carries – to secure its wireless future. 8. Big Brother Awards 2009 The Australian Privacy Foundation has held Big Brother Award ceremonies every year since 2003. Affiliates of Privacy International have been hosting them in 16 countries since 1992. This year on 11th November Telstra was the runner up for the Worst Corporate Invader Award for charging home phone line users a monthly fee to keep an unlisted number and for breaches to the Do Not Call Register rules. A silent line is important for some members of society (such as victims of abuse seeking to avoid offenders) for personal safety reasons as well as for those who seek privacy as a personal right. The Do Not Call Register is designed to protect people from unsolicited telemarketing calls. In August this year, Telstra was fined $100,000 after the Australian Communications and Media Authority found that an external Telstra call centre located in Australia had been contacting non-Telstra customers on the Register in the course of a mobile sales drive. The ACMA investigation found that Telstra’s compliance systems, procedures and supervision were inadequate to prevent such breaches of the Do Not Call Register requirements. The inclusion of personal information in electronic format allows it to be integrated with other data – purposes for which it was not originally provided. When Telstra uses external call centres it is less likely to monitor the use of this information. Where overseas centres are used Australian regulations may be avoided altogether. These threats to privacy, along with job impacts, are one of the chief grounds for opposing outsourcing and off-shoring call centre functions. 9. Win by CEPU member puts unfair contracts in spotlight A recent finding against Australia Post has highlighted the issue of unfair contracts in the communications industry and beyond. In a case brought before the NSW Industrial Court and supported by the CEPU, a contractor member with Australia Post successfully argued that his contracts with the Corporation were unfair because under them he was paid substantially less than award-based employees. The awards considered were both the Australia Post award (together with the current Enterprise Agreement) and the NSW state transport industry award. Using these as a guide to a “just” hourly rate, the Court found that Australia Post had underpaid the contractor by $63,450 over the term of his contract. Justice Kavanagh also ordered that Post pay $9100 for superannuation contributions and a further $15,000 compensation for goodwill in recognition of the fact that Australia Post had acted unfairly to the contractor when he had tried to re-assign his contracts to another provider and had been prevented from doing so by Post. The case highlights the way contracting arrangements are used to undercut conditions in many sectors of the economy including, of course, telecommunications. Lawyers acting for the contractor say that the importance of the case lay in the court’s accepting that contractor rates should be judged against the relevant award rates when considering whether a contract was ‘fair”. They have signalled that more such cases would now be run under the federal Independent Contractors Act. The CEPU’s telecommunications contractor members should contact their state branches for details of this particular case. 10. Pay equity: report recommends stronger measures A parliamentary inquiry set up by the Rudd Government last year has called for stronger measures to address gender-based pay inequalities in Australia. As reported in E-bulletin #22, the recommendations of the 18- month inquiry were widely anticipated and have already been backed by the ACTU. They include amending the Fair Work Act to formalise a stronger commitment to pay equity, granting the Sex Discrimination Commissioner greater powers to act on wage discrimination and establishing a pay equity unity within Fair Work Australia. The report also recommends that the Government lead by example by ensuring that pay equity principles are implemented throughout the public service. The gender wage gap- the difference between average male and average female full-time earnings –is more than 17% in Australia, a figure that is high by international standards. Even more damningly, the report concludes that Australia has gone backward on this measure since 1992 –a slide which is another legacy of the years of the Howard Government. ACTU President Sharan Burrow said that while unions backed the report’s recommendations, stronger measures to enforce company compliance, including performance improvement notices and mandatory action plans, were still needed. “It’s 40 years since the first equal pay test case, yet women still lag well behind men in the Australian workforce,” Ms Burrow said. “Employers have had four decades to correct this inequity. They’ve shown they can’t do it voluntarily so it is time for tougher regulations.” 11. Union movement calls for inquiry on job security The union movement has urged the Rudd Government to act on its commitment to holding an inquiry into worker’s job security and income protection. Policy adopted at the Labor Party National Conference earlier this year commits the Government to holding a wide-ranging public investigation, involving representation of unions, employers, the welfare sector and Government. The ACTU says the inquiry should be held early next year and should consider measures that make business more accountable for providing job and income security for employees, including: • Cuts to executive pay and bonuses to prevent short term risk-taking and a repeat of the GFC • Better protection of workers’ entitlements when companies go broke • Greater rights for casual workers and contractors • Limits on offshoring and the unnecessary loss of Australian jobs overseas ACTU Secretary, Geoff Lawrence, said the economic downturn of the past 18 months had highlighted shortcomings in the current systems aimed at providing income support for the unemployed and protection for employee entitlements. “The Global Financial Crisis underscores the importance of protecting employee entitlements when companies collapse,” he said. “How many times must we see workers left short-changed by corporate cowboys who gamble with people’s livelihoods and make no provision for their entitlements?” “These problems need to be fixed before the next downturn.” 12. Campaign for stronger OHS laws continues The national union movement is continuing its campaign to strengthen proposed national Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) laws. Warning that time is running out to prevent a watering down of current standards, the ACTU has called on the Federal Government to improve its proposed legislation in key areas to reflect the best, not the worst, state regulation. The ACTU’s latest submission to Government pinpoints six key areas where changes need to be made, in particular • the removal of barriers to the work of health and safety representatives and • the granting of the right of workplace accident victims to initiate legal proceedings. The proposed laws include several provisions in relation to health and safety representatives which could potentially hinder them in fulfilling their role. For instance they: • require that an HSR be fully trained before s/he can exercise the right to issue a PIN or direct that work cease • are vague about the timing and funding of HSR training • restrict the rights of HSRs to enlist the advice of other people, either inside or outside the workplace. • allow for a court or tribunal to sack an HSR in a very broad range of circumstances. • only allow HSRs to become in resolution of workplace OHS issues once direct consultation between management and employees has failed. As for the right to initiate legal proceedings for breaches of OHS laws, this is regarded by unions as a key weapon in the fight to ensure that employers honour their OHS obligations. Further details of the ACTU campaign can be found at http://www.actu.asn.au/Campaigns/HealthSafety/default.aspx. 13. BT Openreach employees vote “YES” to job security deal Employees at British Telecom’s functionally separated network unit, Openreach, have endorsed an agreement which will offer greater job security in exchange for changed working patterns. Members of the UK Communications Workers Union (CWU) had rejected an earlier version of the agreement as involving unacceptable disruptions to work/life balance as well as a loss of overtime payments. But BT had said that unless it could get the changes it wanted, up to 13,000 jobs – more than a third of Openreach’s total – would be outsourced. The agreement finally picked up by the CWU membership allows for the phased introduction of new working patterns over the next 18 months, with all Openreach employees having to be available for some evening and weekend work at ordinary hour rates. The maximum number of appearances at these times over any 12 month period is, however, regulated by the agreement. For its part, BT has made commitments that it will not outsource work or initiate non-voluntary redundancies. Further discussions are also being held with the CWU about the possibility of “in-sourcing” certain functions that had previously been sent off-shore. The economic situation in the UK, which has now experienced six quarters of recession, has led the CWU and it members to make job security the union’s number one industrial priority. 14. Chinese mine disaster: labour and globalisation The deaths of 107 people in China’s most recent mining disaster have again highlighted the price that working people are paying for global economic growth. The deaths occurred as a result of an explosion at the mine on 22 November. Early reports have indicated that poor maintenance and OHS practices are to blame. While stock markets look hopefully to China to drive global economic recovery in the wake of the financial meltdown, the country’s 400 million workers continue to live on poverty-level wages and to be exposed to health and safety risks almost beyond the imagination of workers in the developed world. On average, 13 of China’s 5 million miners die every day, with most deaths in the past occurring in the small, privately owned mines which number in the thousands. The latest disaster, however, occurred at the state-owned Hegang mine, part of a conglomerate that includes the Dongfeng mine, where 171 workers died in November 2005. Despite having modern equipment and paying lip service to health and safety procedures, the state-owned conglomerates are under increasing pressure to cut corners to meet ever-expanding production targets – a process that ensures they become death-traps for Chinese miners. Coal production volumes in China have nearly trebled since 2000. Press reports have quoted the deputy head of the government work safety agency as saying the Hegang mine was overcrowded and insufficiently ventilated, contributing to the high toll as volatile gases built up in the mine and exploded. But while this may have been the immediate cause of the disaster, the underlying cause is the breakneck speed of China’s industrialisation, itself increasingly the motor of global economic growth. This growth is occurring on the backs of workers who have little freedom to bargain collectively for better working conditions or power on the job to enforce health and safety rules. Without such rights and powers, it must be feared that outlook for China’s mining workers will remain bleak. |
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Europe: European transnationals abuse workers’ rights in America | Middle East: Domestic workers in the Middle East have a horrible time : Little better than slavery | Mexico: One dead in clashes at Cananea copper mine | France: Unions call for further action against increase in retirement age | Global: Photo-essay: The world's most repressive workplace environments | France: Millions protest over higher pension age | USA: Mott's Strike in Media Spotlight on Labor Day | South Africa: Strike suspended: Unions claim victory | India: Trade unions go on a 24-hour nationwide strike | Global: Unions Step up Pressure for Jobs and Social Justice– One Month to World Day for Decent Work | USA: Obama Unveils Huge Infrastructure/Jobs Program at Milwaukee’s LaborFest | France: Unions to Strike as Sarkozy Pension Bill Debate Starts | Mexico: ICEM Condemns Repression of Workers by Government, Grupo Mexico | South Africa: Did the World Cup Wreck South Africa? | North America: Hyatt faces strikes and protests in cities across North America
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NSW Telecommunications & Services Branch
