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Why TAFE members are proud to be union

  28 June 2016

TAFE enterprise agreement approved

Congratulations!

The results of the staff ballot for your new enterprise agreement have been announced with 84% of staff voting Yes.

This Yes vote puts an end to over 12 months of negotiation, which have seen a number of back downs from TAFE’s original proposal rejected by the union and staff in November 2015. This includes:

• Hours of work. TAFE’s original proposal had 80% of staff increasing their weekly hours to 37, for no extra pay. This was then revised to 36.25, before the ɫ������(CPSU) secured a 35 hour week for all staff. Current 38 hour a week staff will move to 35 hours from January 2017, without a reduction in their weekly wage, and the ability to continue receiving their RDOs.

• Automatic transition to contemporary classification structure. TAFE’s original proposal had staff transitioning to the new classification structure via “restructure”, resulting in 100s of extra restructures throughout TAFE. The ɫ������(CPSU) secured automatic transition in January of 2017.

• Salary maintenance. Throughout bargaining, TAFE consistently refused to maintain the salary of staff who faced a pay cut in the transition to the new classification structure. This meant that staff faced real cuts to their wages in excess of thousands of dollars. The ɫ������(CPSU) was able to force TAFE to agree to “red circle” or “maintain the salary” of anyone whose position transfers over at a lower rate.

• An immediate 2.5% pay rise for all staff, followed by a further 2 years of 2.5% pay rises for the majority of staff. In addition, staff moving to a higher pay rate in the new classification structure will have their salary increased in January 2017, as well as any applicable increments every 12 months thereafter.

• Broken shifts. TAFE wanted to extend broken shifts from the current long standing restrictions (available only for security officers) to all staff.

• Permanent Part Year Employment (PPYE). TAFE’s original proposal allowed for an unrestricted number of permanent part year positions, potentially allowing TAFE to convert current full year positions to part year positions via restructure. The ɫ������(CPSU) won a restriction to the current amount of staff (650) working part year. Part Year Employment will also be limited to certain circumstances where ‘there is genuinely no work across the whole year’. This will be closely monitored at each Institute by the ɫ������(CPSU) and at the Peak Consultative Committee. The ɫ������(CPSU) will also closely monitor the use of part year employment to ensure TAFE does not go above the 650 and can justify each PPYE position.

The ɫ������(CPSU) have forced TAFE to move a long way from their original terrible proposal.