SA Water moves to slash employee conditions
SA Water is seeking to dramatically cut working conditions for many of its 1500 employees in a draft proposal for a new enterprise agreement.
SA Water’s proposal would give it the power to unilaterally alter employees’ hours and would remove more than 150 clauses from the current agreement.
In the draft proposal, seen by InDaily, SA Water suggests consultation with employees and their unions should be conducted after decision-making – rather than beforehand, as in the current arrangement – and suggests tighter conditions on sick leave, parental leave, annual leave and long-service leave.
“To effectively function, the Employer is required to make decisions prior to the commencement of the consultation process,” the document reads.
This would allow employees to “influence SA Water’s decision prior to its implementation”.
In relation to working hours, the document says: “Within the span of hours, the start and finish times and the length of the working day will be determined by the Employer to best meet the operational needs at that location”.
Public Service Association chief industrial officer Peter Christopher told InDaily this morning that industrial action, such as a stop-work, would be considered as a result of the proposal.
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“This document appears to be a savage attack by SA Water management on the employment conditions of their employees,” said Christopher.
“It would signal that government is prepared to allow one of its agencies to significantly downgrade employment conditions, and that has ramifications for workers right across the public sector.
“They’re looking to change the hours of work definition so that management will have sole discretion … in regard to part-time work.
“In respect to job security, they are not looking to redeploy any excess people back into the public sector, but are looking to make them redundant.
“The SA Water proposal is an attempt by management to downgrade conditions.
“We’re having meetings with (members).
“Whether we decide to take action is open to discussion.
“It’s early days at the moment.
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However, he said: “It’s getting to the point where I think members are going to say enough is enough.”
Christopher said the State Government-owned corporation appeared to be retreating from its responsibilities as a public service employer.
“What you have is SA Water looking to introduce a condition which will provide for a redundancy payment of only 16 weeks, maximum, at a time when other people in the public sector taking voluntary redundancy are being potentially paid up to 12 months,” he said.
“(SA Water is) acting as if they are not part of the public sector, whereas under the law they are.
“As such, we expect them to abide by the normal public sector conditions and standards that apply to other public sector employees.”
SA Water released a statement to InDaily after deadline, which says: “On rare occasions where there is a genuine customer or business need, we want to have the ability to modify hours of work to ensure we can respond”.
“We would still consult with employees, provide appropriate notice (minimum four weeks) and take into account individual employees’ family or caring responsibilities – in line with Fair Work Act provisions.
“It is not intended to change hours of work on an ad hoc basis.
“Our proposed clause reflects industry practice, and provides employees with the opportunity to influence how the final decision is implemented.”
The statement argues that removing 30 pages of the current enterprise agreement would “remove ambiguity, duplication and complicated wording”.
“We want an EA that is simple, clear and modern so that employees and managers alike can easily understand their rights, conditions and obligations,” it says.
“..we have been meeting with union representatives for about 12 months.
“From day one, we have made it clear why we have taken certain positions – in particular, to ensure we can continue to meet customer expectations and remain a strong employer into the future.
“We still have negotiation meetings planned and we intend to continue to actively negotiate with the unions to get a fair and balanced outcome.
“We are aiming to put our proposed Enterprise Agreement to approximately 1150 EA-covered employees to vote in mid-June.”
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