The USU Airlines Branch recently shared some promising news with our members working at the airport about our claim for the disability allowance.
This allowance is payable to employees on certain enterprise agreements when they are exposed to safety hazards associated with construction or renovations happening in the airport terminal, such as excessive noise, dust, or fumes.
The Sydney Domestic Airport Terminals, also known as T2 and T3, are currently undergoing renovations to upgrade the food court in T3, and to upgrade the security gates in T2 to meet new security screening requirements.
This has led to loud drilling, excessive dust, and paint and other fumes disrupting our members’ work. For months the airline companies have told us that they are working to minimise the impact of the renovations, such as setting up sound monitoring devices in the terminal and working during curfew hours, but members have reported a very different story on the ground.
Members made multiple safety reports to notify their employers of the ongoing impacts of the renovations. However, even though these issues were formally reported in writing, members told us that they hadn’t received the allowance.
Since there was no action on the allowance, we conducted a member survey to understand how widespread the problem was, and what the airlines companies had done to address these issues. We ended up hearing from over 150 members about their experiences, so we lodged a dispute with each airline that includes an entitlement for the allowance in their enterprise agreement.
Jetstar responded to our dispute to advise that they’re willing to pay the disability allowance and that they’re currently in the process of calculating the owing entitlement for each member, based on how many hours they’ve worked in the affected areas of the terminal.
While only Jetstar has committed to paying the allowance at this stage, this has a positive impact on our disputes with other airlines. Jetstar is under the Qantas Group, so it will be difficult for Qantas to argue that members shouldn’t be entitled to the allowance, when their most lucrative subsidiary airline has agreed to pay the allowance.
For the other airlines based in Terminal 2 such as Virgin, it will be tough for them to argue that staff shouldn’t be entitled to the allowance when another airline in the same airport terminal has agreed to pay it, as they have acknowledged that there are ongoing safety issues in the terminal that trigger the payment of the allowance.
This win was only made possible by the work of our delegates, HSRs, and members who reported on these safety issues and pushed out the survey to get as many responses as possible. With the data from our survey and with Jetstar stepping up for members to pay the allowance, we’ve got a solid basis to continue our dispute and ensure that all members get the pay and allowances they’re entitled to under their enterprise agreements.
We can only achieve these wins when we all work together, so we want to send a huge thank you to our members, delegates and HSRs for all their incredible work on this, and for stepping up for their fellow workers!
