How’s Penrith going?

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Published: Thursday, 18 September 2014 12:31

In the interests of trying to find good in everyone, we’ll leave aside Penrith’s apparent incapacity to properly address a letter to us, to get the title of my position right (it’s Secretary not General Secretary) and to habitually remove the apostrophe from our union’s name.

And we’ll ignore their tendency to address letters to “Sir” when no one here has been knighted yet and when, to be correct, it requires a reply addressed to “Madam” and that sounds ludicrously old-fashioned. Very 19th century, just like their dress code policy.

But congratulations are due to the Council for finally understanding their obligations under clause 39 Workplace Change and Redundancy. This requires that changes with significant effects need to be conveyed to the employees affected “and the union to which they belong”. Everyone in the world knows that means the union office but Penrith has failed on the last two occasions to do so.

We now have a letter from the Executive Manager Corporate advising:

Council will provide written notification to the DEPA office in cases where clause 39 of the Award applies.

Well done.

Still, for balance, we do need to report that they think that they can develop an Enterprise Agreement effecting individual contractual entitlements for employees who have payment for untaken sick leave as a condition of their employment. You can’t, of course, because individual conditions of employment can’t be overridden by an industrial instrument.

Oh well.