The Benevolent Society – Restructuring Joint Consultative Committees – October 2018 (PDF version)
Your CPSU NSW has been trying to continue the JCC meetings with The Benevolent Society (TBS) for a few months now. We had a meeting planned for 6 August, as had been indicated at the completion of the previous consultative meeting held on 21 May 2018, but the August meeting didn’t go ahead.
We have been in discussion with TBS for a few weeks now to try and set a date for the next JCC meeting. We proposed to meet any time during the first week of October, a bit later than planned, but have been delayed again.
We received a letter on Friday 28 September 2018 inviting us to attend a “round table” with BA:DS and 3 other unions. BA:DS provided us their Terms of Reference for the meetings and asked for some feedback. The Terms of Reference is very one sided, in that TBS control the Chair, who decides when meetings go ahead or not, the Chair can eject any representative, the unions are not part of the quorum of the meeting, one TBS delegate per union, (while there are two elected employee representatives) and an unlimited number of TBS representatives.
You can see a copy of the proposed Terms of Reference HERE.
Your CPSU NSW has not agreed to nor provided feedback to TBS’s proposed “round table”.
We believe that, as part of the transfer agreed to by TBS, that the terms and conditions of employment would be carried over for a minimum of two (2) years.
Part of the terms and conditions was a Join Consultative Committee between TBS and your CPSU NSW.
Your union asserts that any “round table” would be in addition to, and not replacing, any Joint Consultative Committee as required under your copied state award.
We are aware that TBS has distributed the invitation provided to your union on notice boards and lunch rooms. It may have been distributed elsewhere. Your union was not informed of the distribution nor was agreement sought. It’s interesting that your delegates are only allowed to place union authorised information on the CPSU NSW notice board only.
This is concerning and frustrating to all as there are many changes occurring and limited ways to address or consult on them.
Your CPSU NSW will continue to correspond and contact our counterparts in TBS to secure a date and time in the near future to open up channels of communication.
