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We've got some exciting news! NAB employees will finally have easier access to You Leave, following years of persistent campaigning by FSU members.

What have we won?

From FY2027, various changes to our You Leave entitlement will apply, including:

• You Leave can be taken at any time during the performance year.
• Eligibility will be assessed annually on 30 September based on actual leave balances, and staff will not have to exhaust all their other leave entitlements.
• The requirement to have worked or been on paid leave for at least 90 calendar days in the performance year will be removed.
• For fixed-term colleagues, eligibility will be based on having a minimum 12-month contract in place on 1 October, rather than having already served 12 months.

How did we get here?

The FSU first negotiated our You Leave entitlement in our 2022 NAB Enterprise Agreement. It's an additional week's paid leave each year intended to help manage our wellbeing and work-life balance.

The problem was, many employees couldn't access it because of extremely strict eligibility requirements, as FSU Workplace Representative and NAB employee Justine Sherwood explains:

"Because you had to use all your annual leave, RDOs and a component of accrued long service leave before you could take You Leave, it meant that You Leave was mostly being taken in August and September. That meant those months were a bottle neck for leave and many teams were left short-staffed. On the other hand, despite qualifying for You Leave, people weren't taking it because it would leave their team short."

In fact, one of the reasons employees initially voted no to NAB's proposed Enterprise Agreement four years ago was because we knew these requirements would be a barrier to accessing the entitlement.

"The win is quite ironic because when we were negotiating the claim for the new Agreement, we repeatedly said to NAB that it wasn't going to work. Four years later, we've been proven correct," said Justine.

Power in numbers

After years of FSU members telling management that the new entitlement wasn't working, NAB has finally announced the above changes.

"This win shows that if something's not right at NAB then we need to speak up about it," said Justine.

"Collectively we have a stronger voice than one or two. There are 40,000 employees at NAB. If only a few speak up then management will think it's not a big deal, but if more than 50 per cent of the workforce say this is an issue, they're more likely to listen.

"We need to work collaboratively for our rights and having the backing of the FSU is paramount to us doing this."

Congratulations to all FSU members at NAB on this terrific outcome!

Got an issue at work you need help with or struggling to access your entitlements? Give us a call on 1300 366 378 or email [email protected].