Thank you to those who took the time to attend our member meeting yesterday to discuss the ongoing negotiations for your enterprise agreement.
Update on Enterprise Bargaining
In the enterprise bargaining this week, the main topic of discussion was work from home entitlements. Ahead of this meeting, we had provided a compromise work from home clause to include in your enterprise agreement. You can look at that clause here.
Unfortunately, LUCRF management were unwilling to consider any work from home entitlement in your enterprise agreement. Their reasoning was that they want to retain their right to change work from home arrangements.
Working from Home
Throughout the enterprise agreement negotiation, you have told us that the working from home entitlements were one of your top two issues.
You told us that you feel that you have proven during COVID-19 that you can work from home productively, responsibly, and in a way that delivers for Fund members.
Given the uncertainty around the future of LUCRF, you said that you want a working from home entitlement in your Enterprise Agreement because it is the only way to guarantee that it will travel with you to a fund who acquires LUCRF.
Working from Home in Industry Super
Our members across the industry super sector are including working from home entitlements in their logs of claims and listing it in their top three priorities.
In enterprise agreements we are negotiating right now in industry super, we are seeing employers willing to include working from home entitlements in their enterprise agreements. We expect to see a number of other industry super employers (and employers across the finance sector) include it in their enterprise agreements in the coming months.
It is also important to note that many industry funds (including AustralianSuper) negotiated their agreements prior to the commencement of the COVID 19 crisis. As a result of this, the importance of including working from home in the agreement was not as significant as it is today. However, when we go to renegotiate the agreement with AustralianSuper in 2023 we will be claiming working from rights in the agreement and we anticipate that by that time, working from home rights will be standard in enterprise agreements across the industry.
Your Decision
We are at a critical point in these discussions with LUCRF Management, with two main choices:
- Escalate our campaign to win work from home entitlements in your Enterprise Agreement through protected industrial action; or
- Accept the LUCRF management position and not pursuing work from home entitlements in your Enterprise Agreement.
Your views on this questions are essential and will determine how we proceed as a Union community.
We have developed a poll of members to determine the next steps in the negotiations. A link to this poll can be found below and it should only take about 30 seconds to complete.
Please complete this poll by 28 July 2021. We will hold a member meeting after that date to discuss the outcome and next steps.
If you have any questions in the meantime, please rely to this email.
Regards ,
Nicole and Alex