Last week, your FSU representatives Yvette Maree Marcelle and Gaylene Stewart, along with FSU official Paul Blackmore, met with BOQ representatives for our inaugural Joint Consultative Group (JCG) meeting.
This forum has been established as a result of your Enterprise Agreement (EA) 2022 campaign and provides your representatives with an opportunity to hear from BOQ about their strategy and to discuss the things matter most to members.
At the JCG, we quizzed BOQ about their planned job cuts as part of their “simplification agenda” and provided them with a summary of your feedback.
We told them that the process has lacked transparency, there is a genuine concern about ongoing job security, and concerns about the impact job cuts would have on remaining employees.
BOQ confirmed that the 400 FTE reduction by FY2026 already includes 100 FTE from 2023 and 150 in Q1 2024, and that there are no particular areas or location for the remaining 250 FTE but that this would occur through “natural attrition” having consideration for workloads.
Since our meeting, we have written to BOQ seeking a number of commitments.
We do not want to see workers forced out of jobs and believe a pragmatic approach can be taken. This would mean vacant positions are filled, there should be no impact on the workloads of remaining staff where people have chosen to leave BOQ, and forced redundancies should only occur as a last resort.
We await BOQ’s response on this and will keep you updated.
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