ca19 UPDATE 3 - 03 may 2019

After a couple of weeks of bargaining meetings, QFES is close to having asked questions to clarify each of the UFUQ claims.  This means that soon, actual negotiations can begin on our claims and this will mean the calls for assistance will start to be made.

Some of your colleagues have already made contact with ca@ufuq.com.au to offer their assistance or respond to specific requests for subject matter assistance and those people will be contacted as and when they are needed.

Your union has also been exploring the detail and specifics of the QFES claims which, as you have seen, are written in a generic way.  This will also conclude soon and this means the claims will be grouped into similar content and can then be negotiated in batches.

Further discussions between QFES and your union are scheduled for Thursday 9, Friday 10, Monday 13 and Tuesday 14 May, and it is likely that our requests for your assistance will likely start after those final general meetings.

I remind you the preservation date for wage rise backpay is 31 July 2019 (one month from nominal expiry date) and all parties (including the other unions involved) remain committed to achieving in-principle agreement by that date.  Following that, some formatting and then a tour of the regions by your union to explain content and then a period of review for you to see what the document includes all must occur.

Then there is a voting period where you have the opportunity to approve or vote against the document, and if the vote is positive, the application is then made to QIRC for certification.

This all means that the actual commencement date for CA19 will be somewhere between September at the earliest to the end of 2019 if all these steps flow correctly and promptly.

The next update I provide ought to be the first where we can start to discuss the specifics of both our claims and QFES claims and how they’re looking regarding agreement or otherwise.

John Oliver - General Secretary

Authorised by John Oliver General Secretary 
United Firefighters' Union of Australia, Union of Employees QLD