Ewin Hannan | December 01, 2008
FIVE thousand Telstra employees have expressed interest in non-union pay deals offered by the telco, amid union claims the company is rushing through the agreements before Labor's workplace changes become law.
Telstra is trying to entice 11,000 employees covered by enterprise agreements on to non-union deals by offering pay rises totalling 12.5 per cent over three years. But unions hope they can use Labor's Fair Work bill to thwart Telstra's strategy.Officials believe the current non-union pay offer and the company's refusal to bargain with unions would not be allowed under the legislation.
Under the bill, where a majority of employees want Telstra to collectively bargain, the company would have to do so in good faith. Employees would have the right to be represented in bargaining and Telstra would have to deal with those representatives in good faith.
About 22,000 Telstra workers are employed on individual contracts, and the company says 5000 enterprise-agreement employees have expressed interest in the non-union deal being offered by the company.
Unions are threatening rolling stoppages, including 48-hour strikes, in the lead-up to Christmas in a bid to pressure the company into negotiations.
Union officials said they had strong support among employees to take action to force Telstra back to the negotiating table.
Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard yesterday insisted the legislation was consistent with Labor's pre-election commitments amid claims by some employers that the Government has exceeded its mandate.
"We promised to sweep Work Choices away and this bill does," she told the Ten Network.
"We promised to give people fairness and balance in their workplace and we promised to give them an industrial umpire who would be there if things went wrong. But we also promised a system that was based on workplace bargaining and that's what our system is."
On Saturday, The Weekend Australian reported employer concerns that the new bargaining created for low-paid workers would effectively allow pattern bargaining. Business claims unions will be able to move into low-income workplaces and access industry-wide arbitration.
The Government has said industry-wide bargaining would not be accommodated in the low-paid stream. It insists the low-paid bargaining stream is about genuinely negotiating with each employer and responding to each employer's issues individually.
Ms Gillard said she did not believe employers considering job cuts would bring forward redundancies to beat the introduction of the legislation.
"I think employers look at their businesses, even in these difficult times, and they say to themselves, one of their single best assets is the hard-working, highly trained staff. And even in tough times, they will do everything to keep those staff on board," she said.