Register here for the FSU Report Back Meeting – 12pm, 1 July (AEST)
Yesterday FSU representatives met with NAB representatives and three Individual Bargaining Representatives to begin the negotiations for a new Enterprise Agreement. The day had been set aside to deal with the issue of Scope, that is who will be covered by the new Enterprise Agreement. Our NAB Agreements have always covered every employee of NAB from Group 1 to Group 7 however NAB are now coming to the table to say they only want to negotiate a new Agreement for Group 1 to 4 employees.
FSU does not agree with this position, nor do the Individual Bargaining Representatives and yesterday NAB were expected to come to the table to explain to us why they are proposing to make this significant change and just how they intend to treat the Group 5 to 7 employees if they were to be successful in removing them from the Agreement.
Unfortunately NAB came with no detail and could not give us any definite answers as to not only why but what they intended to do with this group of employees. The only responses we received were “It’s just a position of the organisation now”! This is simply not good enough and we have requested that at the next meeting NAB return to the table and outline how they intend to deal with over 2,000 employees they are trying to cut out of their protections under the Enterprise Agreement.
Your Enterprise Agreement is the bedrock of your terms and conditions of employment and cannot be changed unless a ballot of employees covered by the Agreement vote in favour of changes, it is looking like NAB are wanting to move Groups 5 to 7 employees onto a policy framework of some sort, whilst we have no detail at this point, what we do know is that policies are wholly at the discretion of NAB and can be changed at any time and don’t require either consultation nor agreement to be changed. This is a very dangerous path that is being proposed and we need to ensure it doesn’t happen.
There will be a meeting tomorrow (1 July at 12pm AEST) for Group 5 and above members to hear more detailed feedback but every member in NAB needs to watch this space because if this is the first attack on employees job security and conditions then who knows what is on their agenda for the broader bargaining process.
Register here for the FSU Report Back Meeting – 12pm, 1 July (AEST)
Not a member yet, now is the time to join your colleagues and fight for you rights at NAB, join today.
Your FSU bargaining team
Adam Fletcher
Justine Sherwood
Meg Nair
Wendy Streets
Alex Cousner