By Bryan Evans and Matthew Purcell
RTBU members who work in infrastructure are no strangers to inclement and outright dangerous conditions. Rain, wind, heat and cold are all factors we battle against to keep the network running.
Over time employers have pushed the boundary between what is considered critical works and maintenance, forcing many members to undertake unnecessary work in dangerous conditions.
As such, the RTBU has led a big push in all RTBU Infrastructure Enterprise Agreements (EAs) to incorporate better conditions for members who are required to work in dangerous weather.
Members have been calling for this to be implemented for a decade and finally through a lot of grit and determination we are thrilled to see it come fruition in both the Metro and V/Line infrastructure EAs.
Since the implementation of the new Metro Infrastructure EA, members have started to utilise the clause and in recent months RTBU and ETU delegates from infrastructure night shift who were exposed to freezing cold temperatures over winter had their inclement weather claims rejected by Metro on the basis it wasn’t quite cold enough. This begged the question – what exactly is cold enough?
Following significant disputation between Metro and the unions, whereby the unions took the position of 4 degrees c (based of Metro’s own policy) and Metro took a comical position more aligned with the Canadian Railways of minus 40ºC.
Following a number of visits to the Fair Work Commission a settlement was reached and was endorsed through a vote of RTBU and ETU members defining “cold” as 2.5ºC for the purposes of the inclement weather clause.
This now means that if the Metro force infrastructure members to work in conditions above 35ºC or below 2.5ºC, members will now receive single time in addition to the rate they were on for the time that they are working in the conditions.
We want to thank all rank-and-file members and delegates across the RTBU and ETU who made a significant contribution finding relevant evidentiary material to provide the ammunition we needed to settle this dispute.
