It’s great to report a big win for Queensland apprentices and trainees. It’s a little complex so firstly, a bit of background. Wages and conditions for apprentices and trainees are traditionally set by what’s called an “order” – as opposed to other workers who have awards and agreements. As previously advised, the Newman Government is undergoing an award simplification process where it wants to reduce the number of awards and simplify their content. As part of this process, the government wanted to have apprentice and trainee wages and conditions included in awards, as opposed to the order. The trouble with this is that as a result of the award simplification process, awards can no longer include any content regarding training. Given that conditions for apprentices and trainees MUST contain training matters, this would result in these conditions being lost if apprentice conditions were tranferred to the award. The Queensland Rail Award was the first cab off the rank for the award simplification process and QR argued before a full bench of the Industrial Relations Commission to have its apprentices and trainees removed from the order and placed under the award. However, the Union – along with the CFMEU, AMWU and ETU, was successful in arguing against this and therefore maintaining the wages and conditions of Queensland apprentices and trainees. Had we not been successful, this could have opened the floodgates for other employers to have their apprentices and trainees removed from the order and onto an award. Whos to say that the Newman Government won’t just make more changes down the track to ultimately get what they want but at least for now, we can claim a win and there haven’t been too many of those to report of late!
Posted on: Thu, 15 May 2014 05:36:21 +0000
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