Your USU/ASU representatives met with Virgin management on 30 January to kick off negotiations for the new Virgin Australia Ground Crew Agreement.

We received a briefing from management on the state of the business and changes that are taking place as part of the Better Business program. Your delegates asked questions of management about the use of contractors and outsourcing, the use of electronic chronologies for recording information about employees and whether they have any plans in the pipeline for redundancies. The company told us that there are no current plans for further redundancies.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday 20 February 2016, at which the USU/ASU will present its claims for improvements to your agreement. Watch out for your organiser who will be coming to visit you soon to get your feedback on our proposed log of claims.

Survey

Thank you to all of you who have already filled in our online survey telling us what improvements you want in your new agreement. So far, employees are telling us that some of the main issues they want addressed are:

•    Pay that properly reflects the work you do;
•    Restrictions around the use of external contractors and offshoring; and
•    Fairer rostering arrangements.

If you haven’t yet filled it in there is still time, you can fill it in here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/QTZYTCH.

We will come back to members shortly with a rundown of the survey results and a proposed log of claims for your input.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact your local USU/ASU organiser Nick Herbert on
0149 761 320.