Our USU Airlines Branch kicked off the year with our Qantas mainline enterprise agreement survey, which set our claims and priorities for the upcoming enterprise bargaining negotiations. Members came forward with calls for better pay and better protections for things like rostering to promote work-life balance. Your USU is currently hosting consultation meetings with members on our log of claims for the upcoming negotiations, so keep an eye out for our sessions near you!
Right off the back of the Qantas EA survey, we’re running another EA survey with our members at Rex. It’s a difficult time for members as we have navigated the implications of the company being under administration, but we are geared up to protect your current EA conditions and to work with Rex to ensure that our members are impacted as little as possible by any potential changes to company operations.
We’ve also been meeting with our Qantaslink Group 1 members to get a headstart on their EA negotiations, as the agreement is due to expire 30 December. Members have raised serious concerns about pay disparity compared to Qantas mainline, as well as issues around unfair and inconsistent rostering. We want to thank the members who have come forward with their concerns for the upcoming bargaining, and we look forward to working with members to address these issues ahead of and during the upcoming bargaining.
Enterprise bargaining can be an exciting time, because it means that we can push for better pay and conditions, and to reach a fairer agreement with our employers. However, we still need to put in the work between rounds of enterprise negotiations to make sure our employers are following the terms of our current agreements and respecting our rights as employees. Our members at Jetstar for example know all too well that their employer will sometimes spin creative interpretations of their enterprise agreement, such as the company suddenly deciding that employees can’t submit statutory declarations to support their sick leave absences. We have been working with members to address these issues and to put employers on notice – enterprise agreements are mutually binding legal documents, and they cannot be ignored!
