Delegate profile: Carl Foster
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- Created on Thursday, 01 March 2012 15:55
ASU Delegate Carl Foster of Goulburn Valley Water
The ASU believes that it is important to share your victories with each other as this shows what can be achieved when we all work together! ASU Delegate Carl Foster of Goulburn Valley Water has kindly shared the following story with us...
I remember it was a dark and cold morning in July when I was sitting at my desk waiting for Greg to replace me. I could hear the rain outside and lifted the blind slightly so that I could watch the rain lash the windows whilst finishing off the last of my duties. All of a sudden footsteps could be heard down the hallway and before I knew it Greg was standing at the door to the office.
“They haven’t applied the pay rise to our additional shifts!”
“Good morning Greg, nice to see you too” I replied
As it turned out the base increment pay increase that was awarded to us had not been applied to our additional shift rate. Enquires were made with our payroll officer to the reasons the percentage increment had not been applied and the response was that the increase only applied to the fortnightly pay not extra allowances.
Greg and I spoke about this and both agreed that the only time we did an additional shift was when we were covering for someone, which was overtime. As everyone else within the organisation who received the increase would also have their overtime increased then it was only fair that we were entitled to the same conditions.
I spoke with my manager and stated our case of having the increment increase applied to our additional shifts, and even though he could not find any exact wording that supported our claim in our ASA, he whole heartedly supported us. Unfortunately the same view was not held with our HR department.
Due to the lack of cooperation from above we decided that the only way to succeed was for all of us to refuse to do additional shifts until the increase was applied, this left a large number of uncovered shifts. We had two outcomes from this action; the shifts were covered by an additional person greatly reducing the extra strain on us and we also were given the percentage increase on our additional shift rate!
ASU 1 - GVW 0
The ASU would love to hear from delegates who have any stories big or small that they would like to share. To share your story, please contact Paula Doody on (03) 9342 3495 or email: pdoody@asuvictas.com.au
