On August 1st a meeting was held discuss CBA’s proposed operational changes in 90 regional branches. Below is an overview of what was discussed and an outline of how you can be involved in the process and access support from your union.
We discussed your right to be consulted about major workplace change under the Enterprise Agreement, and CBA’s obligation to genuinely consider the feedback they receive. We also discussed the limited usefulness of this power when it comes to fully preventing the change – ultimately CBA can do this.
We talked through an example of how the FSU has been effective through consultation for other members and discussed improvements and adjustments that we have secured in the recent past through effective and vigorous consultation. These were things like pay increases, the ability to opt out, the ability to take more hours, etc.
We discussed the fact that some questions, concerns and suggestions would be held collectively and that others would be more individualised and that we’d take a different approach to each category of issue, but that CBA had an obligation to deal with both.
And finally, we then discussed feedback received from members so far and discussed further questions, concerns and possible solutions to put to CBA. These were ideas like a longer day of trade to allow community members to bank on a Thursday or Friday until late, questions about what would happen if you only had a two-person team – could someone be in the branch alone, and what a specific role in Direct Banking looks like day to day.
Today I have attempted to capture the feedback so far in this letter to CBA. [https://www.fsunion.org.au/multifunctionbranchconsultation/]
It’s critical that as many of the 432 impacted people as possible participate in this consultation process, so please share this information with your colleagues and urge them to add their voice online here [https://actionnetwork.org/forms/cba-branch-changes/].
For those of you that have a more personal concern about how you’ll be impacted by this, please reach out directly to the FSU to discuss what we might be able to pursue for you.
Contact the FSU Member Rights Centre on 1300 366 378 from Monday to Friday, between 8am and 6pm AEST.