The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has written to the Australian Electoral Commission complaining about the way that Telstra has been conducting employee votes on whether to accept collective agreements.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has written to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) complaining about the way that Telstra has been conducting employee votes on whether to accept collective agreements.
(Credit: ZDNet.com.au)
Unions have been attempting to obtain a union-negotiated,
company-wide agreement for Telstra workers, but Telstra ended
negotiations with the unions
last July.
In August, the company put
forward an agreement to staff Telstra's Wholesale and Service Advantage
divisions, which was voted down by workers in September. Since then Telstra
has put the agreement, which offers 12.5 per cent pay increases and
up to 7.5 per cent in performance based bonuses, to smaller groups
of employees.
ACTU assistant secretary Tim Lyons said in a letter to the AEC that it believed the ballots held on the agreement were not
transparent enough, with no information provided as to how many and
what type of employees were included in the votes, when the ballots
were and what the final results were. Employees were entitled to
these things, Lyons said.
"If electors are unable to discover details of the voting
process and scrutiny, obtain a copy of the roll, appoint a
scrutineer or obtain a copy of the declared result, it cannot be
said that they are fully informed that the process is
transparent," Lyons said.
Requests for information or to appoint a scrutineer had in
some cases been referred back to Telstra, Lyons said, which he
believed to be "absolutely inappropriate".
Telstra is already recognised as offering the best pay and
conditions in the tele- communications industry
Telstra spokesperson
He sought confirmation that any future ballots that the commission conducted would allow employees
to have the information they had not been receiving until
now.
A Telstra spokesperson said the complaint would be a matter for
the AEC. They said that there had been 16 ballots where workers had
voted in favour of Telstra's suggested agreement, although they
would not specify how many ballots had turned the offer down or the
number of people who would now be on the collective agreement.
A spokesperson for the ACTU said that the numbers which have
signed could range from 200 to 500 workers, but that there was too
little information to know for sure.
The final date to accept the agreement is 31 January. The
Telstra spokesperson did not know what would happen after that
date.
"Telstra's current Employee Collective Agreement easily
exceeds national average increases of 3.9 per cent per year, and
Telstra is already recognised as offering the best pay and
conditions in the telecommunications industry," the spokesperson
said.
Unionised Telstra workers have been striking for a better agreement
since December, although Telstra has said the action has had no
customer impact to date.
"It should be remembered that union membership at Telstra is only 15
per cent of our employee base and on average, only about 5 per cent of
Telstra's call centre consultants are eligible to take action. Most
Telstra employees will be at work serving our customers," the spokesperson said.
