During negotiations CBA’s initial pay offer was 1.25%. They told us they were proud of that. This was in the middle of a pandemic and right when Matt Comyn was being granted a 15% pay increase.
CBA employees stood up and spoke out about this. Over 7000 signed the petition calling for a fair increase, and hundreds submitted questions to the AGM as shareholders. CBA have subsequently revised their proposal many times, but there’s still one key ingredient missing: fairness.
Our claim was for 3% for everyone. Both years. CBA have increased the offer to 3.25% for some, and that’s great. But it still needs to apply fairly to everyone, and not come bundled up with all these weakened protections.
CBA are spruiking the pay increase as market leading, and that’s a credit to CBA employees. When we act together we can achieve fairer outcomes in this EA – the movement so far on pay is evidence of that.
The pay increases in this agreement will be backdated even if we send CBA back to the negotiating table with a NO vote. It’s not fair that having taken so long and rejected fair and reasonable protections for workers that CBA are now using people’s understandable impatience for a payrise to get their changes through. We’ve waited this long, we should tell them we’ll wait until it’s fair
If a no vote were to be successful it doesn’t mean no pay increases. It means CBA will hear loud and clear that you want fair pay increases and a fair agreement and they’ll be sent back to the negotiating table with us to discuss that. The pay increases would remain under negotiation and would be backpaid once we could agree.