Last week, NMC advised the ASU that they had decided to withhold the payment of your back pay, contrary to the agreement reached around the bargaining table and the information given to employees before the vote. We sought legal advice, and formally raised our concerns with management.
In addition to raising these concerns, our legal advice was that due to the drafting of the enterprise agreement’s wage increase clause, management needed to provide the full back pay to the first pay period after 1 July 2022, despite that not being the employer’s intention during bargaining.
We are pleased to report that this issue is now resolved and back pay will be paid.
Initially, back pay for the pay period 27/7/22 to 9/8/22 will be paid in this pay, however, the additional back pay for the pay period 13/7/22 to 26/7/22 will be made in the following pay period.
So what’s the problem?
There is a question mark around whether the Fair Work Commission can approve the current Disputes clause. We repeatedly advised Council that we would be seeking a review of this clause during the approval process.
Your EBA contains a clause around Displinary Disputes and how they are managed. The ordinary Disputes clause excludes matters relating to this clause, which means that management can effectively ignore the process required in the EBA and we can’t raise a dispute around the actions taken by management.
We don’t think that’s right, so we’re asking the FWC to review the matter and determine whether it’s lawful for management to exclude that clause in that way. Management took exception to us raising these issues with the FWC and threatened to withhold your back pay until the agreement was approved.
We will keep members in the loop on the disputes clause issue as the matter progresses.
For more information please contact:
ASU Tasmanian Coordinator Aaron De La Torre | adelatorre@asuvictas.com.au | 0427 813 821
