Employees transferring from Owner Managed Bank of Queensland branches (OMB) to BOQ Corporate workplaces can leave inferior workplace agreements behind and move to a collective union negotiated agreement, thanks to a Fair Work Australia ruling yesterday.

We’ve taken another step on the road to a Workchoices-free finance sector, and that’s good news for finance workers, particularly those who have been disadvantaged by inferior employment conditions.

Fair Work Australia granted an application by the FSU for orders under the Fair Work Act Transfer of Business provisions that the Greenfields Agreement would not transfer with the transferring employees, and instead the BOQ Enterprise Agreement 2010 would apply to those employees. Importantly, the Bank of Queensland supported the FSU’s application.

The Greenfields Agreements were made by employers under the WorkChoices legislation, which allowed an employer to make an agreement with itself, involve no-one else in the negotiations, and have that agreement apply to employees. The net result of this was that the conditions under the Greenfields Agreements were inferior to those applying in BOQ Branches owned by BOQ.

With a number of OMB’s reverting to BOQ Corporate ownership in the last year, and a further three branches due to convert in July this year, this ruling puts another nail in the Workchoices coffin. We say good riddance.

The implications of the FWA ruling are:

• The BOQ corporate agreement will apply to the transferring employees and the transferring work;
• If the branch is again sold, the corporate agreement will apply unless another agreement replaces it;
• If a future owner wants to implement another Greenfields Agreement, they will have to negotiate with the FSU.

It is unlikely that the FSU would agree to negotiate any future Greenfields Agreement with Bank of Queensland OMBs, since the branch if sold would not be “genuine new enterprise” as required by the Fair Work Act.

Leon Carter
FSU National Secretary