Attachments:
Clause 10 CE (Conditions of Employment) Award
The PSA seeks the opinion of IPART members in relation to your employer’s proposal to vary the IPART Award
• In February of this year IPART contacted PSA and advised that they were proposing to:
• Extend the bandwidth time to start at 6am and finish at 10pm
• Remove core time
• Remove the restriction on the maximum meal break being 2.5 hours
The PSA raised a number of concerns around the practical implications of this, particularly in relation to unsafe working hours, access to overtime, the removal of the restrictions around maximum length of meal break and whether a local arrangement for the IPART Award can supersede the flexible work arrangements outlined in the award. We raised concerns in the JCC and undertook to seek legal advice. At a member meeting on 12 May your Industrial Officer and Organiser advised that we would provide an outline of our concerns, discuss the advice received and propose next steps.
Unsafe Working Hours
The PSA believes the deletion of core times and extension of bandwidth to 10 pm has the potential to lead to unsafe working hours. We have concerns around working late in the office or remotely elsewhere, travelling late at night, question whether the building is even open at night and how working late will be monitored. Will employees feel the need to continue working beyond 10 pm to complete work, particularly if working remotely?
How does this affect work/life balance? If there is an incident and we have raised this as a concern, will the department be exposing itself to litigation under WHS legislation?
We believe the deletion of core time and extension of the bandwidth may mean that staff will end up working unsafe and untenable hours.
Removal of restriction on maximum length of meal break
The proposed variation to clause 9.5 of the IPART award (Lunch and Meal Breaks) we believe puts the clause in conflict with the decision not to vary clause 9.1.3 (core daily hours of work being 7 hours a day).
While we understand that this may be an attempt to fix an issue within SAP, we are concerned that having the ability to take a break greater than 2.5 hours during the day could lead to an attempt to move staff onto split shifts. (For example, starting at 8 am, stopping at 12pm, starting again at 7 pm and finishing at 10pm ) It may well be true that current management are reasonable people, but it does not mean that new management down the track will be reasonable and an Award cannot just be varied by one of the parties, or at the drop of a hat. We believe there are better ways to manage a SAP issue.
Overtime
Our legal advice suggests that the apparent intent of the proposed changes would be to limit access to overtime, however the correspondence in February explicitly indicates that there is no amendment to clause 9.3.3 of the Award (the entitlement to be paid overtime for work directed before 7.30 am and after 6pm would remain). We would like to understand further how IPART sees that working.
You can find here clause 10 of the Conditions Award and Clause 9 of the IPART Award
Next Steps
We have created a survey for you to enable us to determine next steps. Please click here to undertake the survey. The survey will close at 5pm on Monday 23 May 2022.
If you know of someone who is not a member please consider sharing this bulletin and asking them to join. It is important that as many staff as possible have their say.