RIC / RailCorp secondees placed with ARTC

By Kristin Van Barneveld, National Industrial / Research Officer

Regular meetings are held of a Joint Consultative Committee which involves the Rail Tram & Bus Union, the Electrical Trades Union, Australian Services Union and the Professional Engineers (APESMA).

A range of issues will remain on the agenda until they are satisfactorily resolved. One concern for the unions is that ARTC appears to pay lip service to 'consultation' at these meetings. For example, unions are simply 'advised' of important developments rather than actively consulted before a final decision is made.

Some of the key issues on the table in the JCC meetings include:

• Release of delegates to attend relevant training / meetings
• Concerns about ARTC's requirement for some members to travel excessive time to work
• Concerns about staffing levels
• The development and implementation of local consultative committees
• On-going OH&S concerns of members
• Training and assessment issues.

In the past, ARTC has been slow to respond to union concerns at the JCC and raised directly with the relevant manager. Union persistence and pressure on ARTC is finally being to pay off, with some serious concerns being addressed.

ARTC Direct Employees' Enterprise Agreement

Several meetings have been held between ARTC and the combined unions negotiating committee for an Enterprise Agreement for the ARTC direct employees. Negotiations to date have used the RIC / RailCorp enterprise agreements as starting points. Initial agreement has been reached over less 'controversial' provisions such as:

• consultative provisions,
• the inclusion of a 'definitions' section in the new agreement,
• provisions relating to anti-discrimination and equal employment opportunity, and
• clauses relating to apprentices / trainees / graduate programs.

ARTC have indicated they do not agree with the following aspects of the Unions' claim:

• the provision of a 19-day month, enabling rostered-days-off to be taken by employees,
• clauses relating to supplementary labour / outsourcing,
• the amount of sick leave provided to each employee per year,
• provisions relating to maternity / parental leave,
• classification rates (industry standard),
• pro-rata entitlement to long-service leave if an employee resigns before reaching the statutory requirement of years of service for long service leave, and
• overtime rates.

Three more meetings have been scheduled for May - two of which are full day lock-ups. The aim is to finalise the agreement by the end of June 2005.

The unions are also developing an organising campaign to recruit more members among ARTC direct employees. Their input will be sought before the agreement content is finalised.

ARTC review structure of operations division

The ARTC 'white paper' on the operations division was provided to the unions in late March and copies have been forwarded to all members.

In the paper, ARTC suggests a new organisational structure which would come into operation when the labour services agreement between RailCorp / RIC and ARTC expires in 2008. This agreement covers the secondee arrangement between the two organisations.

The new organisational structure will result in the number of train controllers decreasing from 400 to 50 employees over the next three years.

ARTC advises that it plans to hold meetings with affected workers over the next few months to seek feedback. Given that ARTC management want to deal directly with employees, the RTBU encourages members to attend and provide feedback to their RTBU organiser about ARTC's future plans.