Over the last 2 weeks a record number of RBA staff came together over FSU Zoom meetings to discuss the RBA’s Workplace Agreement proposal, including pay.
Your feedback was loud and clear, it was unfair to ask staff to sign onto supporting an agreement that locked in uncertainty on pay for three years and didn’t reward high performance for the previous year. Many of you also sent a strong message directly to the Bank through various internal forums and communication lines.
Your voices making a difference
Your FSU negotiation team provided this feedback to the RBA negotiation team. We have then had a number of additional meetings over the last week to improve the bank’s proposal.
As a result of your actions to support our negotiations we have now seen changes made to the pay proposal. This includes a return to the performance bonus payment as outlined in the table below, that recognises outcomes for the 2020/2021 and replacing this bonus payment in 2022 with a one off 2% base salary increase.
Importantly, due to member action, the Bank has now agreed to move away from locking employees into a salary increase based only on the wage price index for the third year.
Instead, the proposal now runs for a 2 year term only. This is a positive outcome that provides more certainty on pay over the 2 years and breaks away from the Federal Government’s restrictive wage policy that calls on Government Business Enterprises to cap pay increases at the WPI for no less than 3 years.
Other improvements include:
- Strengthening the opt-out provision for those agreeing to include weekends in their ordinary hours by decreasing the notice period from 12 weeks to 6 weeks.
- When ordinary hours includes weekends, overtime work on scheduled days of on a week day is now calculated as double time.
Next Steps
In light of the latest improvements in addressing the concerns raised by members, your FSU NEC and the RBA have now met and reached an in-principle agreement on the proposal. Over the next week we will work with the Bank to ensure the details are correctly set out.
Currently the Bank intends to put the proposal out to an all-staff ballot from the 13th of September. Look out for further detail from us on this proposal as well as information on the next steps, and building on this success to secure a better deal in 2 years’ time.
Please contact your FSU Workplace Representative or contact the FSU office directly at fsuinfo@fsunion.org.au if you have any questions.
Not a member yet? Join with your colleagues here: www.fsunion.org.au/join
In Unity,
FSU