|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
|
 About Us  About Unions NSWAbout UnionsWho's WhoInformation Centre What's Going On? Annual Reports   
|
|
|
Michael Gadiel - Executive Assistant (Industrial)
SRA EBANegotiations for the State Rail Authority Enterprise Agreement started last June and have extended over the last seven months. Sticking points included the number of public holidays able to be accrued and salary maintenance. The final outcome gives members a 3% increase over the next twelve months. Murrumbidgee IrrigationMichael has also been involved in extensive negotiations with the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Authority on a new award to underpin the wages and conditions of employees prior to transfer from the NSW public sector to local ownership. This has involved identifying current public sector entitlements and translating them into a new award. The award was made on Friday, 18 December and includes five years employment protection as well as Premier's Memorandum standard voluntary redundancy provisions. Education and TrainingAlongside his industrial responsibilities, Michael has continued to represent the Labor Council in the area of Vocational Education and Training policy. This has involved providing union input into a range of committees and working parties, including the DET New Apprenticeships Reference Group, the Australian Railway Training Accreditation Council, the Board of Vocational Education and Training - Industry Liaison Sub-Committee, Board of Studies - VET Advisory Committee, Vocational Education Assessment Centre Advisory Committee, the Property Services ITAB Board and the Macarthur Group Training Company Advisory Committee. Michael, along with Mark Lennon, also participated in the judging panel for the Trainee and Apprentice Of The Year Awards. Michael has been particularly active in the implementation of School Based Traineeships. He negotiated with NSW employers an agreed set of model provisions for the implementation of part-time and school-based traineeships in the NSW industrial jurisdiction; the NSW Clerical (State) Training Wage Award was used as the model. These provisions have been adopted in a range of awards, including the Retail and Crown Employees Training Wage Awards. Despite this, there are still many areas where these provisions have not been adopted. A challenge for 1999 will be to ensure that provisions for part-time and school-based traineeships are extended into a broader range of NSW awards, otherwise employers will be encouraged to bypass our industrial standards and employ trainees under Australian Workplace Agreements. Youth AffairsYouth Affairs has been a particularly active portfolio this year with the announcement of the AIRC Inquiry into junior rates. Michael was responsible for drafting the Labor Council's submission to the inquiry which may be found on the Internet at http://council.labor.net.au/papers/junior.html. The Labor Council's position is that Junior rates are discriminatory and an historical anachronism. The submission highlights the fact that junior rates arose by applying the same logic that justified the payment of lower wages to women. The submission calls for Junior Rates to be phased out and replaced with non-discriminatory alternatives, such as competency-based classification systems which pay according to skill level, rather than age. Furthermore the Labor Council called for the full adult rate to be paid to all eighteen year olds. The Labor Council will be active in campaigning against junior rates throughout the inquiry, early in the new year. InternetFinally, Michael has continued to maintain responsibility for information technology and the Internet. As you will see, this years annual report is now being published electronically. This represents an ongoing policy in the Labor Council, and elsewhere, to shift from a print then distribute, to a distribute then print, pathway. LaborNET is set to have a range of new content areas including: OHSNET
Workers Online
LHMU
The concept of http://www.labor.net.au/ is to promote the clustering of union information at a key gateway point of the Internet. The Labor Council, through LaborNET, is committed to providing unions with the opportunity to establish a functional, cost effective, Internet presence, with a range of state of the art infrastructure. If unions are to continue to survive in an ever more hostile environment, then we must embrace new technologies, like the Internet and Email, to ensure that we are communicating with our members in the most effective way possible.
|
|
|
Home | Contact | Feedback | Sitemap | Privacy Statement |
|
© Unions NSW 2001. URL: http://council.labor.net.au/annual_reports/1998/annrep_1998-Michael-2.html
Unions NSW is proudly created, designed and programmed by |
 |
 |
  |
