A further Eastern EBA meeting took place at Mascot on 15 March. Unfortunately the assessment of your negotiating team was that there was no real progress on the key issues that need to be resolved.
Given we have been in discussions with Qantaslink since the end of July 2015 the ALAEA believes we have now reached a level of impasse in these negotiations whereby we need to seek conciliation assistance from the Fair Work Commission. The ALAEA intention is to shortly lodge a bargaining dispute under s240 of the Fair Work Act and the next EBA meeting is therefore expected to take place at the Fair Work Commission in Sydney. Members will be informed when there is a confirmation as to when the conference before the Commission will take place.
The key issues that will be raised at the FWC are:
Significant concerns raised by the ALAEA negotiating team about future job security for LAMEs in response to the Company claim that a new Eastern Engineers EBA has to include provision for A Category Company Authorisations. The ALAEA preference is for A Cat provisions to not be included in the new EBA.
We have continued to raise concerns to the Company about having to accept an 18 month pay freeze especially considering the recent announcement on 23 February which confirmed that Qantas is now trading very profitably. The 18 month pay freeze proposed by the Company means that Eastern Engineers would receive a first pay increase under a new EBA from January 2017 instead of from 1 July 2015.
Other issues still to be resolved include a reasonable adjustment to the 717 tail payment, an increase to the Leading Hand allowance payment and inclusion of the DMS classification in the new EBA.
A further update will be issued once there are further developments to report. Thanks for your continued support and please encourage any LAMEs at Eastern who are not yet members of the ALAEA to consider joining to enhance our prospects of getting a fair and reasonable EBA outcome.
In Unity
Noel Speers
National Industrial Officer
Notice_006-2016_Eastern_Australia_Airlines_Engineers_EBA_Update
Recent Comments