Union resumes bargaining at Mount Isa City Council

As your ally in the workplace at Mount Isa City Council, The Services Union understands the importance of staying the course when it comes to Certified Agreement (CA) negotiations, regardless of how long it takes. The good news is that after an extended seasonal break, our Union recently resumed negotiations with the Council.

A request for a firm pay offer was the priority discussion item. We reinforced our position that members would not support waiting till the end of negotiations to begin discussing money. The Council was unwilling to table any sort of offer on the day, but indicated it would be in a position to do so at our third meeting for the year in approximately six weeks’ time.

We then started working through the existing and proposed clauses, making notable progress compared to last year’s discussions. While we agreed on items such as the need for genuine consultation regarding workplace change, our Union took issue with the Council’s repeated position of removing wording from any CA provision which is ‘already covered by the Award or legislation’. It is our view that a CA should be as comprehensive as possible, to avoid the need to consult other documents. The Council undertook to analyse the other current CAs by way of comparison and parked similar discussions until then.

We will resume negotiations on Thursday 23 February. If you have any questions before then, please contact your workplace delegates Richard Auld and Maddi Ross. Although we have negotiations back on track, the real test of the Council’s willingness to finalise the CA will be in its pay offer. While we hope the Council has taken note of outcomes of other recent Local Government negotiations, the best tool we know of to achieve the result you deserve is a strong union. If you work with someone who’s keen for a fair deal and is not yet a member, remind them that joining is easy online.