Communication Workers Union

Telstra management is asking you to evaluate it's latest "final" offer on the pay increase to apply in a new EBA. They also are asking you to pass on your views to your "bargaining agents".(They used to be called unions) We agree you should evaluate it properly and that means look at it from all angles and don't just consider any "hard sell" one way or the other. Clearly Telstra management are keen to "offer" you a vote on an agreement by April-May, therefore you should fully understand not only what is on "offer" but also what it means if you accept after going to a formal vote. They appear to be unsure of how this “final/last” offer will be received, hence the “straw poll” approach they are embarking on again.

If you accept, then by the end of the agreement (April 2012), your base annual pay as an EBA employee would be lower than an employee with the same designation employed on the  non-union ECA. Don't take our word for it. Go to the graph and check for yourself.  This graph is based on an annual wage of $60,000 in September 08, (approx CFW5) and is quoted in a simplified figure as you progress through the period of the agreement. Other CSSW, CFW,TPW and TW designations will be either side of this figure.

What is more if you calculate the amount of money earned by ECA employees over the agreement period from October 2008 (approx when the EBA expired and the ECAs were back paid to) to April 2012, (the expiry date being suggested in Telstra's offer), you will find that employees on the ECA will earn many thousands of dollars more than EBA employees with the exact same designation.

If Telstra managers were prepared to alert you to those facts or if you asked them the question they would reply that "the EBA on offer contains benefits/advantages that have been negotiated and which are not available to employees on the ECA. Benefits like the right to arbitration of disputes, all of the protective clauses in the redundancy agreement, consultation over performance management and performance pay, and others”.

Even if you accept the management principle that EBA employees need to pay for these improvements, who says that they should pay thousands of dollars over the life of the agreement and receive lower pay rates? At no stage, do the proposed EBA rates match the ECA rates.

If you accept a lower pay rate for equivalent work performed in ECA areas, when will the discrepancy be fixed? Will it ever be fixed?

When the ECA employees become part of the next EBA, (as is being proposed), if this "offer" is accepted, there will be a pay rate for expired ECA employees, which will be higher than an EBA employee at the same banding level doing similar work.

There is no apparent explanation if you compare it against the universally accepted “equal work for equal pay” principle that Australian’s are very familiar with. Members have highlighted in the recent AUSPOLL surveys that they are not prepared to tolerate different pay rates for the same job.

You need to decide if you are prepared to live with such a situation into the future (and pave the way for those new starters that follow into the industry).

The choice is yours.

LEN COOPER
CEPU Branch Secretary
M. 0438 389 302

JOHN ELLERY
CEPU Branch Assistant Secretary
M. 0419 823 580