The Slater and Gordon Support Staff Enterprise Agreement 2014 took effect on 7 April 2015, and since then, your ASU representatives have been busy getting to work implementing the benefits we negotiated for members during the negotiations.
Support Staff Service Leave Days
It was brought to our attention that there was a lot of confusion around how support staff will be able to access their service leave days. At first, payroll decided that your 1 or 2 days leave (depending on your length of service) would accrue in Affinity over the course of the year – meaning it would take until the end of the year for it to show up as a full day or 2 for you to claim.
We thought this was complicated and unfair, so raised the issue with management. After negotiations with management we can now confirm the following:
- You can access your service leave days at any time in the calendar year they accrue– and you can even access them up until 31st January the following year;
- Your 1 or 2 days of service leave for the year will be uploaded in Affinity from February each year;
- For the period of January each year (before the service leave days are uploaded) you can go into negative balance if you want to access your service leave days for that year before they are uploaded to Affinity.
Overtime Working Group
Another benefit we obtained through the enterprise agreement negotiations was the creation of an overtime working group, to find solutions to deal with the high levels of unpaid overtime being worked by support staff. ASU members are represented on this committee by Darryl Robinson (QLD), Kendall Hogg (WA), and Serina Dowding (Victoria).
We had our first meeting on 8 May to get the ball rolling. We told management there were a lot of issues contributing to unpaid overtime at Slater & Gordon, including:
- Lack of staff coverage for leave;
- Local management’s expectations to get work finished before heading home, but without offering to pay for that time spent staying back;
- Workload issues – workload allocation that just cannot be achieved in ordinary working hours.
The first step will be an ASU survey of all support staff in the next few weeks – keep your eyes out for this and make sure you have your say.
If you have any questions, please contact your local ASU representative.