Dear General Staff Members,

As a result of the impasse over key membership claims your negotiating team conducted a round of meetings to update members on the status of bargaining and to seek direction on how to proceed. A presentation summary can be found below.

The key issues the union bargaining team identified are;

• The employer’s nil pay offer – the unions are claiming  a 5% salary increase from 1 February 2012.
• The employers rejection of the unions’ claim to replace GSASR with a fair pay model and their claim to replace the GSASR process with the following statement.

“ The employer shall review annually the development, performance and salary of the employee. Such review shall have regard to the duties of the employee and shall comply with relevant policies. In reviewing the employee’s salary, the employer shall take into account the performance of the employee”

There is currently no relevant policy on general staff salary reviews and the proposal removes the current limited protections including TEU representation on the GSASR committees and the right of appeal. The proposal does not address members on-going and well expressed concerns about fairness, equity or transparency.

Three options were discussed

1. Negotiating on the employer’s claim to replace GSASR with the above statement
2. Pursuing unions fairpay model – with a campaign of action
3. Explore alternative options – in particular  replacing this year’s GSASR round with the application of a standard payment for all union members using the GSASR budget. For example if the GSASR budget is 2% of the overall salary budget the standard rate could be $1000 which equals 2% of $50,000 ( median pay rate).

In addition the parties would review the current salary levels which the employer acknowledges “does not reflect the specialised nature of general staff  in 2011”

At the membership meetings members voted unanimously to reject option number 1 to negotiate on the employer’s claim and voted unanimously to combine options 2 and 3, that is, continuing with the campaign to replace the GSASR process and as a first step towards developing a fair, transparent remuneration model

• review the salary scales and
• apply the 2011 GSASR budget as a standard payment for all union members. 

Please have your say by replying and voting yes if you support the option outlined in red above or no if you wish to pursue the employers claim as outlined in bold italics above.