I wonder what FSU really stands for...

[passionpop]

recently we had negotiations for our new EBA (Enterprise Bargaining Agreement - employment contract for all staff). under Australian law, if anyone in the business is a union member, that union defaults as being the staff representative with company when negotiating conditions and pay and stuff under the EBA . for us that is the FSU (Financial Services Union).

I am not a member of the union, and after this negotiation I never will be. I have considered joining the union in the past and I have had a previous union rep ask me to join and work to become the union rep. That will never happen after how the union fvcked us over.

firstly I work in a company full of idiots. this became apparent last negotiation after we were given a very poor EBA to vote on and despite it removing a heap of conditions and tieing our pay rises to our performance (KPIs) without giving us protection from the business changing the KPIs, 2/3 of the people that voted last time voted yes to the EBA. a year later the KPIs were made impossible to attain. (previously our pay rises were connected to CPI index increases)

EBA negotiations in our company are in two parts. there is the negotiation between the business and the union (representative for staff), and there is the EBA working group which are staff who nominate to discuss with management what they want to see in the EBA. the working group is in discussions before and during the negotiation process.

I raised an interest in being part of the working group. I was knocked back by HR because I had leave over the negotiation period. No one in my department was represented in the working group, but we are a small department and often forgotten.

because these negotiations are something I am interested in, I did go to all the communications sessions before the negotiations began and after to find out what was happening.

before the negotiations began, HR informed us they were looking at the 3 year agreement. I understand they would have political reasons for that because there is an election coming up and a change of government could mean a change in work place legislation and they would want to put the next EBA through with more favourable legislation.

I discussed this with a friend who is a union rep with another organisation who said their current agreement was being negotiated as 3 years 1 month. it sounds weird but it makes sense see our current EBA ends on the 30th of June and the new conditions always come in at the start of the next financial year, which for us is the next day. negotiations for a new EBA must start prior to the end of the old EBA. Because pay rises wont go through until the EBA is signed off, it means we have as little time as the company desires from start of negotiations to sort out our new pay and our bonuses. Sure we can vote to take industrial action if they don't start negotiations 30 days before the expiration, but that still doesn't give you time for negotiation.

so if there is a delay in signing off an agreement (as there was last time), we do get back-paid to the 1st of July, but our bonuses also wont go through until much after the usual time (September) because the bonuses are calculated on the new EBA. Some people only see this.

by having a 3 year one month agreement, it mans that our payrises already go through as per the last agreement, however we have the flexibility to take our time negotiation a new contract. instead of having one month like this year, we have 13 months before a delay in negotiations delays our payrises.

after the EBA was negotiated, we had meetings to clarify the EBA. I asked a couple of questions. one was why, despite the company saying they wanted a 3 year EBA we had a 4 year one on the table and why didn't we negotiate for a 3 year one month one. That was when the lady who worked for the union and who was negotiating for us piped up and said 'oh that's my fault' and explained she had to negotiate the EBAs for two large areas of our company and said 'it is easier for me'

hang on Union B!tch... it is easier for you to fvck us over for 4 years rather than 3.1? who do you work for? who gives you your money, Them or us?

what else did we get from her awesome negotiation skills... oh we lost out leave loading. sure we will be getting a slight payrise to compensate the loss of leave loading, but no amount has been set in stone for this. so we could get royally screwed over again.

no conditions were improved other than those that changed thanks to legislative changes... so that means we get more paid maternity leave... which the government pays for anyways

the company screwed us over too i that they emailed out the details of how to vote and the vote finished 4.5 days later (after a weekend) so if you were not in on any of the 3 business days or you left early on the Friday (the email was sent in the afternoon) you didn't get to vote.

we were also screwed by the 119 staff who voted yes, because they want their bonuses in September and not later. Stupid people. you never vote yes for the first EBA they show you... it costs the business more to keep running the EBAs through the lawyers than to just give staff what they want.

but if the representative for staff supplied by the union had not been looking after her selfish needs before us, I can't help thinking we wouldn't have been so badly screwed.