More small steps at Maranoa Regional Council

The Services Union held further Certified Agreement (CA) discussions with Maranoa Regional Council late last week. We ended up with another small gain with the Council agreeing to increase all allowances by 8.85% upon certification, and then by the agreed pay improvements in years two and three. However, it is those second and third increases where we still have some progress to make. The Council remained firm on its position of 3% per year, despite our repeated call for 4% for those years, given the recent and ongoing economic circumstances. The Council’s proposal for the first year still stands at 5.5% upon certification, with 2.5% of that amount backdated to 1 July 2022.

We spent most of the rest of the meeting going through track changes in the proposed new CA, which was time-consuming and did not result in anything tangible. We will put it strongly to the Council at the next meeting on Thursday 2 March that we want to finalise all outstanding claims, rather than spend more time undergoing a line-by-line drafting process for a document that is not yet ready to be drafted. In the meantime, remind your colleagues that the road to a new CA is often made up of many small steps, and that our Union is by your side for every one of them. If you work with someone who hasn’t yet started walking with us but wants the most effective path to our final destination,  joining is easy online.