CSU has agreed to change how Long Service Leave is calculated, from calendar days to working days. The use of ‘calendar’ days has caused much confusion for many people. Every 5 days of LSL you take, another 2 days is used for the weekend. When these are taken off, staff often get annoyed! Its reasonable to think that when you lose 2 days of LSL, it was taken off wrongly!
The new method of calculation is that every day of Long Service Leave accrued, will be an entitlement you can use, just like Annual Leave is calculated. There will be a change over, so please be prepared! If you currently have 28 days of LSL, this will become 20 days. For every 7 days of LSL you have now, you will get 5 days listed.
This will not reduce your entitlement, it will just remove the weekends from being included what is listed for you and take the mystery out of the equation. Those weekends are not paid leave anyway. It is estimated that the LSL due after 10 years will be 43.5-44 days.
The University has ‘costed’ how much their LSL liability will increase if they allow staff to access LSL pro-rata from after 5 years of service than waiting until 10 years. They claim it would be $4.3 million.
Based on these figures, the CPSU estimates that waiting until the 10 year mark would introduce a liability of $5.3 million in 5 years time. This is an extra $1,000,000 liability for the University. We still argue that providing LSL for staff after 5 years would help reduce this future liability. While there would be some reduction in this extra $1,000,000 due to staff turnover and staff not staying for 10 years after the 5 year mark, the University is required to recognise prior service at other Universities in Australia. This, on average, would balance out the difference.
If 20% of staff access their LSL after 5 years, the University’s liability would be an estimated $4.2 million in 5 years time. This could save the University $100,000 over 5 years and possibly more if more staff access LSL from after 5 years of service.