Utilities: Water

	Some of the affected workers at the August meeting

Tassie local government workers transferred to Hobart Water – but what about their conditions?

In early August the ASU held a meeting of two groups of former Tasmanian local government employees with something in common: both groups had been transferred by local councils and are now employed by Hobart Water. What has remained unclear is whether they will retain the same pay and conditions they enjoyed when employed in local government.

Both groups are still doing the same or similar water/wastewater operational and maintenance jobs that they were previously performing for the councils, but now they perform those same jobs as employees of Hobart Water.

Former Derwent Valley Council employees transferred to Hobart water on 1 October 2006 and former Glamorgan Spring Bay employees transferred on 2 July 2007.

This transfer of workers to Hobart Water is the first pre-emptive response by local government bodies to act upon the Tasmanian Government's predicted drive towards modernising water and wastewater services in Tasmanian local government.

Other local government bodies are expected to respond to the Government's initiatives over the next 12 months to two years. The full details of the restructure are unknown at the present time.

The ASU called the August meeting of operators and maintenance workers to discuss how to protect their wages and conditions with an enterprise agreement at Hobart Water.

Despite promises by the councils which previously employed these employees "that they would not be disadvantaged", the legal protection only lasts for 12 months under the Transmission of Business provisions of WorkChoices and Hobart Water is not saying what conditions of employment will apply after 12 months.

The current Enterprise Agreement at Hobart Water would disadvantage employees as it does not provide a significant number of conditions which the employees now get under the Municipal Employees Country Councils Award and respective enterprise agreements, for example

• plumbing allowance
• sewerage allowance
• extra week of leave in addition to annual leave when regularly working on weekend rosters
• 17.5% annual leave loading
• grace days between Christmas and New Year's Day
• Easter Tuesday holiday
• three weeks pay per year of service for redundancy pay etc.

Negotiations have been proceeding for over 12 months and negotiations are expected to continue for some time yet.

The ASU believes it is critical that the conditions of these workers are protected now or this will be the thin end of the wedge for council based water workers in Tasmania who transfer out of local government. Our position remains that those workers must not be disadvantaged by their move from their original employer.