CA22 - UPDATE 9 - BARGAINING DISCUSSIONS REACHING CONCLUSION

I am pleased to report that your union and QFES are on track to achieve an agreement on our combined claims within the period required to preserve any backpay on certification of a new agreement to 1 July 2022.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?
I wanted to make sure you are aware that certification of your new certified agreement by QIRC is still some months away as the following list of processes are yet to be completed –
• Approval of the agreed position by the Queensland Government, allowing QFES and the unions to proceed, then
• Drafting of all of the wording of new / amended clauses in line with the agreed principles achieved during the bargaining period (these processes are always split into two parts), bargaining (which is just wrapping up), and then drafting (which must match what was agreed in bargaining), then
• Publication of a draft version of the proposed certified agreement to all employees to be covered, which the IR Act requires occurs for at least 14 days, then
• A voting period where you and your colleagues have the opportunity to vote YES or NO to the certified agreement being presented to QIRC for certification, there is no set period for the time to vote, but your union and QFES like to give you and your colleagues time to vote, and due to the continuous shift and rotating leave rosters, this will likely be more than a week, then
• An application must be put by QFES to QIRC for a certification hearing where all parties to the proposed agreement must attend and provide formally required agreement to the certification, then
• The QIRC will list a hearing date, hold the hearing and if all goes well, will certify the agreement with a commencement date, then
• QFES and QSS start working on the new pay rates and backpay (they never do this until an agreement has been certified), then
• Your new entitlements commence and backpay can be organised for the headline wage figure as per certification.

That set of processes will take some months to work through.

WHAT DID WE SUCCESSFULLY BARGAIN?
At this stage, I cannot provide specific details of the agreed outcomes for CA22, but I wanted to say that the negotiations have been quite positive and I hope you will be pleased with the agreed outcomes and that when you are given the opportunity, you will vote YES on certifying the agreement.

As soon as the formal approval from the Queensland Government to QFES is given, I will be able to articulate the outcomes to be written into CA22.

STATE BRANCH AND STATION VISITS IN LATE NOVEMBER AND EARLY DECEMBER:
Along with industrial officers from your state office and other state executive members, visits to all seven regions and many specially called Branch meetings are about to be organised for late November / early December, and I’ll provide more details about these meetings as soon as possible.

These meetings will include details of what your union has obtained, and we can hold those discussions on the basis we expect the formal offer to be made by QFES in the very near future. 

More to come as soon as we have organised the state-wide visits.

John Oliver - General Secretary