The AMWU will campaign for a “no” vote on two separate agreements if Sensis moves ahead to put them to a ballot. A mass meeting of over 70 AMWU members also voted for a one hour stop work and protest.
Sensis has refused to give the AMWU equal pay for temps, will only offer “consultation” on targets, and its pay rise offer is inadequate.
It is offering 3 per cent a year over two years on both agreements, claiming its profits have gone backwards. But Sensis’ profit this financial year was still around $700 million down only $30 million from the year before. The full AMWU claim for 7 per cent is only 0.0027 per cent of Sensis’ profit.
The other agreement, negotiated by the CPSU, is worse. It has no RDOs, only time and a half on Saturday, references no award, contains an “individual flexibility clause” that can override the agreement, provisions for cashing out annual leave, and sales staff can be required to work unpaid overtime for unspecified “reasonable additional hours”.
A key sticking point is disputed classifications determining which workers are covered by each agreement. Around 150 staff working as web specialists, content collectors, advertising data specialists (ADS) and production filers have long standing claims to move onto the Advertising & Design Agreement (A&DA).
Not only would this see them correctly classified for the work they do, it would deliver them accrued time Rostered Days Off, double time on weekends and better union rights.
The AMWU had reached “in principle” agreement with Sensis on a new enterprise deal, dependent on these disputed classifications coming across. But Sensis has refused to agree to reclassify the workers.
Sensis blames the AMWU and CPSU for being unable to agree over the classification changes. But Sensis has the decision making power. Sensis made the decision to put the jobs on the wrong classifications so that staff would get inferior conditions.
86 out of 109 ADS staff (the main disputed classification) have signed a petition wanting to be on the A&DA. Sensis has ignored both the petition and the AMWU’s suggestion to, “ballot employees in the disputed classifications and let them decide where they sit.”
By a Sensis worker
