As you may be aware the current Support Staff Agreement will expire on 30th June 2013. This means that your pay and working conditions are up for negotiation.
The CPSU Bargaining team met with UTS management and other unions on Tuesday this week. As is normal for most initial EB meetings, much time was spent on administration; working out meeting schedules and funding for staff representatives to be able to attend.
Your EB negotiators at the first meeting were Rosa Bow, Greg Hampshire and Mark Christopher, supported by Andrew Holland and Nathan Bradshaw.
Management and the both the Unions went through their time frames for submitting their Log of Claims. The Log of Claims sets out each parties intentions in the upcoming negotiations. All three parties have committed to providing their Log of Claims by 1st June, with the CPSU planning to hold a LOC endorsement meeting for our members in the week of 20th May. Please stay tuned for further details to come in the next few weeks.
In addition to the various administration issues there was initial discussion on a number of other issues including:
Payrises – Whilst the CPSU will soon be asking members what an acceptable pay rise would be and how much you want us to ask for, the University indicated that their initial position is any annual pay increase of 4% or above would be unsustainable.
Only CPSU members will have a say in how much pay we lobby for!
Keeping separate agreements for support staff and academics – The NTEU will be seeking to have one agreement comprising of Senior Staff, Support Staff and Academics. Our members have told us repeatedly that they are happy with keeping the working conditions for Support Staff and Academics in separate Agreements, this ensures that the hard fought conditions for Support Staff are not traded away for greater Academic conditions, and vice versa. At this stage the University is happy with the current separate agreements.
How Support Staff are referred to across the University is up for review. Not that long ago we were all referred to as “non-academic staff”. This was changed after much discussion to “Support Staff” to ensure the great diversity of all employees who support the entire University membership was included in our classification. As Support Staff are becoming more and more professional, in nature and in status, within our educational communities the CPSU is seeking for this to be recognised by changing the naming to Professional Staff. This name reflects the three key themes coming out of our Listenings last year – Respect, Recognition and Reward.
At the moment the CPSU is developing our draft Log of Claims. The Log of Claims has been developed using the feedback we received from YOU during our Listenings meetings throughout 2012 and 2013, as well as input from your elected CPSU workplace delegates. This will be distributed to members in the next few weeks to enable you to give us further feedback and comments. The Log of Claims will then need to be endorsed by the members before serving it to UTS Management. Remember what we bargain for will come straight from the members, so it is important to be involved in this process.
What can you do?
To join the CPSU, download a membership form, or to change to Direct Debit: https://membership.psa.asn.au
UTS CPSU Blog – http://interestinpresentcommunity.blogspot.com.au/
Bargaining updates – https://cpsunsw.org.au/agencies/universities/
Twitter – @CPSUnion
Facebook –http://www.facebook.com/CPSU.NSW