Welcome to the ASU’s monthly Know Your Rights series. ASU members at AVI have bargained hard over the years to secure above Award workplace entitlements. However, it’s one thing to lock entitlements into an Enterprise Agreement and another to make use of those entitlements.
The ASU knows that the first step to living an EA is to communicate its contents. To that end, the Know Your Rights series will focus in on Enterprise Agreement based Entitlement’s by providing ASU members at AVI with summaries of some of the elements.
Cl 44 Cultural Leave
A cultural leave clause cannot be read to operate discriminately. To that extent, Cultural Leave must be available to all employees, not just those who can establish that they belong to Cultural or Religious minorities.
Employees at AVI are entitled to up to 2 days cultural leave per year to observe at cultural or religious activities. These days can be taken consecutively and are provided in addition to personal leave entitlements.
Presumably cultural leave may be taken for religious ceremonies like Passover or the Eid. But don’t forget, weddings, funerals and confirmations are also religious ceremonies.
Similarly whilst practices like Chinese New Year or the ceremonies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples might come first to mind when thinking about cultural activities, celebrations of Bastille Day or Thanksgiving might have real significance for some employees.
The ASU provides these examples to demonstrate that all employees should be able to see the value of cultural leave and all employees should from time to time have good reason to put it to use.
Should you have any further questions about these entitlements or, any other workplace issues, don’t hesitate to contact ASU Delegate at AVI, Mark Kavenagh or ASU Organiser for AVI, Andy Lewis on 0409 778 890.