COMMUNITY POST OFFICES UNDER THREAT
Readers will no doubt be aware of Australia Post's continuous moves to close communities' local post offices. These moves are often aided by the Property Division of Australia Post. Increasing rents to well over market rates to ensure the community post offices become "unprofitable". Such actions are nothing short of manipulation and certainly are not in keeping with Australia Post's obligation to provide postal services to the Australian public.
Another post office has been targeted, this time the historic Sorrento Post Office on the Mornington peninsula is under attack. State Branch officials were in Sorrento last week informing locals who were unaware of the plans. Needless to say they were unimpressed.
The Sorrento Post Office was first opened in 1871 and the community intends for it to continue to provide full suite of services for future generations. Residents intend letterboxing the area and setting up a stall at the supermarket on pension day and lobbying local pollies and Ahmed Fahour (who is a neighbour) and their management.
The Victorian Branch of the union has put forward proposals for improving the financial viability of the post office to the State Retail Manager.
The union will be campaigning with the local communities to keep these corporate offices open.
WORKREADY - the new FND scheme
IN TYPICAL AUSTRALIA POST FASHION MANAGEMENT HAS COMMENCED THE ROLL OUT OF ITS WORKREADY PROGRAM LAST WEEK, conducting workplace briefings around the country, even
though the program is in dispute.
WorkReady is a company managed treatment plan for any work-related injury. There was an
agreement in EBA7 to a WorkReady scheme but we believe that the document being distributed by Post has a number of misleading statements.
- FIRST, THE DOCUMENT WAS NOT AGREED WITH AUSTRALIA POST. Any suggestion that it is agreed is untrue.
- SECOND, YOU HAVE A CHOICE. You can go to your own Doctor or the company doctor. Either way the Doctor will get the WorkReady paperwork and he/she is required to complete the paperwork.
- THIRD, THE POST PAPERWORK IS MISLEADING. The medical reports of the company doctor will be used in any workers compensation claim.
matter and members concerns.
In the meantime, the union advises all members to ring the union if you have a serious accident at work so we can brief you on all your rights.
THE IMPORTANCE OF P400’s
EVERYWHERE IN THE AUSTRALIA POST NETWORK, BOSSES ARE NOW SUGGESTING THAT EMPLOYEES NO LONGER HAVE TO FILL IN P400s OR INCIDENT REPORTS. The union was bemused by this, until we found out that management bonuses are now being paid in relation to the number of incident reports in their area of responsibility.
Members will remember following the Senate Inquiry into how Australia Post treated its sick and injured workers, management bonuses were stopped in relation to Lost Time Injury. Now management is up to their old tricks. Managers are suggesting to workers that they fill in First Aid Registers or Hazard Reports.
The union strongly recommends that members fill in a P400 whenever they suffer an accident, incident, injury or near miss. The Safety Rehabilitation Compensation (SRC) Act requires that a worker NOTIFY THEIR EMPLOYER IN WRITING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE IF THEY SUFFER A WORKPLACE INJURY.
THE MODAPTS TIMES IN ROM FOR AGENCY BILLPAY TRANSACTIONS ARE IN DISPUTE
FOLLOWING COMPLAINTS FROM CWU MEMBERS that these transactions are taking longer in the new WebPOS system.
In the meantime any reduction in hours that are foreshadowed will be strongly resisted until the dispute is resolved.
Whilst on ROM, times for Bulk Mail Lodgements (BML) transactions are not agreed and will be the subject of further discussions including changes to the transaction time and the impact on staffing.
An ergonomist engaged by the union to help in the dispute over ROM has found that while MODAPTS is reasonably sound for repeatable actions it cannot account for the total work activity of PSOs in post offices because of the variability of that work.
This means that the MODAPTS times set by Post for transactions such as billpay are necessarily limited.
These differences should be the focus of efforts to refine the study and recording methods used by Post when determining staffing levels.
ICE, ICE BRADY & THE BULLY-fleas
UP UNTIL THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS THE CUSTOMER CONTACT CENTRE, WHICH WAS MANAGED BY LONG-TERM AUSTRALIA POST MANAGERS, HAD WHAT COULD BE DESCRIBED AS A CULTURE OF CONTENTMENT.
The majority of workers were happy; it’s been stated that most even enjoyed coming to work.
“Hang on a minute,” said a Controlling Flea at Head Office when he became aware of this unsettling phenomenon. “We can’t have this! Contented workers. What’s the matter with the Controller at that place? She’s obviously lost it. Get her out of there!” he snarled at a subordinate Flea. “Send in Jacobson and Anderton to wrest back control of the bloody place.”
Brady Jacobson and Sharon Anderton, a scurrilous pair of Fleas, once worked as Telstra managers where they honed their ‘skills’ of psychologically beating down the poor buggers under their control. “The CCC would seem an ideal placement for this pair,” thought the Head Office Flea as he nipped out for a nice cup of tea. “Control. Control. Control.”
1.
How this virulent strain of Bully-Flea attacks the nervous system
subjecting its victim to a campaign of stress that often leaves him or
her crying uncontrollably in the lunchroom or over
the phone to a loved one?
2. How thirteen new employees who joined the CCC in October 2011 were whittled down to three by Jacobson and Anderton within five months? and
3. How the workers are mercilessly flayed with the ECDP (‘Employee Counselling and Disciplinary Policy’) as the attrition rate soars correspondingly? (On one floor of the CC workers stay an average of 2.6 years and on Anderton’s floor an averageof 1.4 years (Dec 2011 figures).
METHODOLOGY:
Give the team leaders a grander title: ‘team managers,’ and groom them so that they feel themselves to be a trusted part of management. They will then willingly join with the Bully-Fleas in their psychological warfare on the workers.
Use Time and Motion standards to control the length of time allowed to deal with calls and the amount of seconds allocated for ‘after call’ work.
Misuse the ECDP by subjecting workers to counselling for the most minor infringement. Even if these reports have to be withdrawn later due to Union involvement the worker has been subjected to a level of stress that’s bound to be detrimental to his or her health, and will make it easer to force the worker out.
Shift. Shift. Shift. Shift their desks around. Change their shifts around. Shift the tea-break times around on a daily basis. Control. Control. Control. Shuffle the buggers around the office so that time-wasting friendships are not entrenched. Keep them moving.
Hire an in-house disc jockey to prattle on cheerily, play a variety of music with inspirational ‘adverts’: “happy workers, happy customers” and in reference to the Bully-flea, Brady Jacobson,
drivel like: “Ice, Ice Brady,” which is a take on the “Ice Ice Baby” lyrics by the group Vanilla Ice.
Play it at a level loud enough to make it hard for operators to hear the customers on the other end of the lines: a tactic that in one particular case drove a worker of ten years standing to the brink of madness as the lyrics droned in his ears.
The employee mentioned, who holds a responsible position where clear thinking is paramount, has endured more than most. During the first three days after the radio was introduced by the Bully-fleas he suffered unbearably: constant panic attacks drove him close to insanity. He left work early on the third day and went to the doctor’s to get time off. When he returned to work the Bully-fleas continued their relentless psychological attack saying that eventually he might get
used to it or controllers might even consider lowering the volume.
Late in December, with his health deteriorating rapidly, he attended a practitioner ‘approved’ by Australia Post, who wrote a letter to the manager stating that in his opinion the employee’s
health was suffering from the effect of piped music. He wrote that by Australia Post management arbitrarily changing his work conditions the employee, who needed an environment where background noise was minimal so that he could write and ‘reflect on the course of action to take,’ would become a less effective worker as a consequence. The doctor said that unless the music stopped the victim had two options: the first was to go onto medication (unthinkable); the second
was to leave his job of many years where he had been happy.
THE BULLY-FLEAS NEVER EVEN READ THE LETTER!
They said that he could not be relocated to a radio-free environment and then after the worker had yet another panic attack two weeks later he was sent to solitary confinement: shifted from level 3 to level 2 where he was removed from the rest of his team and furnished with a computer that didn’t have access to all the same systems that he needed to be able to work at his optimum.
Nevertheless, as he anxiously awaited a reply to his request to turn off or down the speaker right above his desk he persevered with his work to the moronic tune of “Ice, Ice Brady” and other
inane dribble.
Meanwhile the brilliant Fleas found out (only after conferring with a technician) that it was indeed possible to turn off the speaker above his desk but said that the volume on level 2 was
already lower than level 3 and it would upset some workers if the radio were turned off or down.
Two weeks later, as predictable as this strain of Flea can be, they moved him again, this time, as he says: “next to the door; there’s some appropriate symbolism here.” In a letter to the union, he quotes Dr Michael Peel of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture:
“Music is used to make the detainee aware that he has no control over what’s going on in any of his senses. Deprivation of normal sensory stimulation and lack of control over one’s environment
is a disempowerment that eventually dehumanises people.”
This describes the situation at the ‘Control Centre’ perfectly and as our member astutely points out in a letter to the union, the type of torture employed by Jacobson and Anderton “makes a mockery of Australia Post’s ‘We are for Zero’ work place safety policy. Australia Post
is failing to meet its obligations to identify risks to psychological health and developing and implementing measures to eliminate or control them as far as is reasonably practicable, as outlined in the Occupational Health and Safety Code of Practice (Cth)” he writes. Another ‘detainee,’ received a notice of a Warning Counselling Interview for ‘failing to notify of sick leave.’ This person had severely cut his thumb on a broken glass whilst washing the dishes before work. Meaning to
ring the ‘Control Centre’ after a doctor had staunched the blood pumping from his thumb, he spent all day, firstly at the doctor’s surgery and then at the hospital after the doctor’s referral. A conscientious worker, he presented at the CCC the next morning with his bound-up thumb on one
hand and a doctor’s certificate in the other. After intervention by the union the Warning Counselling did not proceed but psychological bullying against him escalated and he was eventually sacked for the following behaviour:
Complaining about his faulty computer. The Fleas insist that he was the one at fault, not the computer. A fellow gulag inmate dobbed him in for swearing (saying the word ‘bloody’) whilst he was skylarking with his friend during ‘downtime.’ His team manager, continued to micro-manage and harass him. Finally he retaliated, remonstrating with her, when with a laugh, she threw a
Warning Counselling letter in his face. The member was then dismissed but fought on doggedly. He took the Bully-flea to Fair Work Australia for an Unfair Dismissal. Not prepared to return to the gulag he received a confidential settlement.
In another petty attack on a detainee, controllers gave a Warning Counselling for failing to confirm a customer’s name instead of merely solving hr problem. She had accurately recorded the caller’s name too, which made a counselling ludicrous. The controllers ‘got’ her eventually: a supervisor was instructed by the Bully-fleas to monitor her phone calls for a disproportionate and unwarranted amount of time. Bully-fleas and team leaders were seen to ‘go up’ like cricketers when they found something to ‘do her’ on: she was unfairly sacked for breaching the privacy policy: after documenting a customer’s name and eParcel tracking number she stated the person’s address whereas, according to the book, she should have elicited it from the customer.
Without hesitation The Board of Reference reinstated her to her position.
Imagine yourself to be a young pregnant employee.To your horror you find that you are unexpectedly bleeding. You rush to your team manager, an older woman who you are sure will offer consolation and advice. Wrong. Your team manager, the same menacing manager who
bullied member number 2 until he was sacked and who was eventually counselled herself, tells you to ‘get back to your chair and keep working.’ The number of complaints about this so-called manager became too much even for the ‘Iceman’ so she eventually ‘resigned.’
In what he calls an ‘Overview’ of himself on an Internet site, Jacobson says: “I am a proven performer in setting the strategic direction, then delivering against revenue growth, customer experience, operational effectiveness and employee engagement operating plans.” Whatever
that nonsense means! He says: “I consistently deliver transformational and sustainable change.”
Transformational? yes, but not in a good way. Sustainable? Not if people who suffer under this regime continue to fight it as the above members have done and are indeed still doing. Bully-fleas have to be kept on the hop until such time as they tire: then one simply cracks their backs.
If you work at the CCC please pass this on to Jacobson and Anderton. Their deplorable behaviour has to stop and this union intends to stop it.
I’m Rolly Burrows.
You’ve just read another Flea Report.
READ THE LATEST COMMUNICATION WORKERS NEWS
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE ISSUES WHICH COULD FACE US IN THE 2012 NEGOTIATIONS?
There are obviously some key issues which members are likely to want to pursue e.g.
- the 2.5% pay disparity in the company rate compared to employees who are employed on an ECA. As part of the settlement of the 2010/2012 EBA with Telstra, some discussions have continued between the parties about the 2.5%. Telstra still claims to be committed to find a way to pay the 2.5% but only as part of the bargaining for the new EBA.
- a decent annual pay rise 5% per annum?
- travel conditions (e.g. travelling allowance, excess travel time, relocation allowance), to be in the EBA rather than just Telstra policy.
- greater job security provisions relating to contracting out, off shoring of jobs, labour hire and agency employment etc.
- the right of member on non-expired AWAs to choose to transfer to the EBA on acceptable conditions.
- the right of members on ECAs to transfer to the union-negotiated EBA on acceptable conditions.
- the need to push back or end the Telstra preferred wage fixing process, which is a non-negotiated system of annual reviews with no guaranteed increases. This system applies to about two thirds of Telstra employees, currently outside the EBA.
- to scrap the Telstra separate system of banding / grading and fixing of company rates which is a totally non-negotiated system dictated by management. This system applies to about two thirds of Telstra employees, currently outside the EBA.
EMPLOYEES ON AWAs - we are all in this together
The Howard Government introduced AWAs in order to fgive employers the "flexibility" to reduce your wages and conditions.
Despite the Howard Government's defeat in the 2007 Federal elections, many workers remain on so-called "Work Choices" AWAs. Most in Telstra don't expire until late 2012 and early 2013.
Telstra's AWA workers have been in constant danger of having their working conditions reduced (because they are not all guaranteed in the AWA - they are subject to Telstra policy) and having their real wages reduced, because Telstra makes exclusive decisions on their job pay rate and on their annual pay increase without negotiation with anyone.
It is a fact that because you work alongside workmates who are covered by the union-negotiated enterprise agreement ( the union negotiates and gains agreement on the EA), that helps keep some sort of "floor" under your pay and conditions.
In the 2010/2012 EBA, the union agreement ensured:
- that if you transfer to the EBA after your AWA expires, your current pay can be protected
- you are guaranteed the same working conditions and rights at work as EBA workers
The negotiations between the union and Telstra for a new EBA will soon begin. The 2010/2012 EBA has an expiry date of September 2012 and EBA workers are entitled to new pay increases immediately after that.
The union has a view that all employees (whether employed on AWAs, ITEAs, ECAs and EBAs), would be better off under the one EBA. this not only makes good organisational sense, for Telstra it would strengthen employees in their bargaining capacity with the company.
THE NEXT STEPS FOR EMPLOYEES ON UN-EXPIRED AWAs:
- Establish whether you have reason to get off your AWA (eg being disadvantaged). Under the Fair Work Act you can get off by agreement with the employer. Contact the CEPU if you think you have a case or you wish to consider the possibility of moving to the EBA before your AWA expires.
- Check whether your AWA was properly registered with the Fair Work Authority when you signed it. To check whether Telstra failed to register your AWA with the Workplace Authority in 2007/2008, when you signed up to the AWA (the employer was required by law to have the AWA registered with the Authority), you should send the email below to the Workplace Authority:
FWA Agreement Unit
Dear Mr Smith
I am enquiring as to whether you have on record, a workplace agreement between myself and Telstra? Such an agreement should have been registered with you in late 2007 or early 2008.
- (FULL NAME)
- (POSTAL ADDRESS)
- (EMAIL ADDRESS & TELEPHONE)
- If
by chance the AWA is not formally registered with the Authority, (
apart from this being a breach of the law by Telstra), then your AWA
would not be legitimate and it may be possible to transfer to the
collective EBA sooner, rather than later if you wished, regardless of
whether Telstra agrees or not. Please notify the CEPU
with any developments in this regard and we will help you decide on
your options.
If your AWA has expired and yu are considering exercising your option to transfer to the EBA, please contact the CEPU to help you examine the pay rates and other issues, to make sure you are not being disadvantaged. Be careful of information on these issues given to you by managers, as the information is often wrong and in some cases very "LOADED" to suit what they believe are the company's interests.
Situation facing employees in Telstra:
- Employees on non-union collective contracts (ECAs) are being denied important conditions of employment and rights at work.
- Employees on ITEAs (another individual contract like AWAs) are being denied adequate wage increases and basic rights at work.
- Employees on EBAs have been short changed in wages and entitlements which should have applied during the 2008/2009 year.
How do we get there? How are we getting there?
Firstly, all ECA employees should be merged with the EBA orkforce in the next EBA 2012. This was agreed between the CEPU and Telstra in the last EBA negotiations.
Secondly, ITEA employees all have the right by law to choose the EBA, (they all expired 31/12/2009), except if they are employed in a part of the business covered by an ECA. Then they can only transfer to the ECA.
What we now have to do is to win the right for all other AWA employees to choose the EBA, and category 1 of the EBA if they wish, and not to be forced to wait until their AWA expires, or to be forced into category 2 of the EBA (with no negotiated and agreed pay increase and no negotiated and agreed classification pay) as Telstra currently forces you to do. Or, even better, to scrap Category 1 and Category 2 altogether.
Post Date: March 2012 | CWU Telecommunications
The times are only a guide
Posties
are aware that the Mail Delivery Centre Statistics (MDCS),
(management’s current ‘time & motion’ program) is not
valid.
Management at the Delivery Joint Consultative Committee on 23 February
2012 has acknowledged that there is no confidence in MDCS.
The
union’s policy is that every postie should do their best to work
efficiently but at a safe and comfortable speed. Don’t be conned or
bullied into working at a speed that may cause injuries or
accidents.
There
has been a recent push for a ‘speed-up’ in Delivery. Some
managers are conducting a ‘Record of Interview’ after postie returns 10
minutes late.
GRACE
TIME
MEMBERS ARE REMINDED ABOUT THE ‘GRACE TIME’. This traditionally has been 15 – 20 minutes to recognize that fact that every delivery day is different.
NO RECORDS OF INTERVIEW SHOULD BE
CONDUCTED UNLESS POSTIES ARE IN EXCESS OF 20 MINUTES OUTSIDE THEIR
TIMES.
SORT
RATES
There
is no agreement on sort rates. The 18 small letters per
minute
and 13 large letters per minute on a 3 stem VSort frame has been an
expectation for over a decade. The rates that management can
realistically expect vary according to the number of points on the
round, and the size of the slots on the frame and the volume of mail
received on any day.
In
regard to sequenced mail, the union has not agreed to a merge rate or a
sort rate for throwing sequenced mail straight into the
frame.
Sorting sequenced mail straight into the frame was proposed as an
alternative to Separate Bundle Delivery, and a trial was conducted late
in 2011 in a small number of Centres. In Victoria, these
Centres
were Dandenong and Airport West. An average sort rate of 35
per
minute was not achieved. It should be noted that this trial involved
sorting into a clear frame. This is a condition which is not usually
available. Posties are encouraged to apply themselves as
diligently as they can but they should not stress or ignore Safe
Operating Procedures in the attempt to meet this aspirational rate.