Union members are rightly frustrated at the pace of bargaining with NextSense. We have been negotiating this agreement for a long time and there are still a range of major outstanding concerns which have not been satisfactorily addressed.

At our last bargaining meeting, the combined unions raised a number of serious issues with the classification and pay structure in the proposed NextSense enterprise agreement. NextSense have commit to provide the unions with a response to these issues by the end of this week.

The HSU still has very serious concerns about many fundamental issues in this agreement, including:

• Major changes to annual leave, meaning that some employees would lose entitlements and may be significantly worse off overall;
• Sweeping new powers regarding sick and personal leave, including the right for your employer to require you to an ‘independent medical assessment’ with the report made available to NextSense;
• Changes to the notice and evidence requirements for employees accessing personal and carers leave;
• A range of potential negative impacts of the new classification and pay system, meaning that some employees may have their wage frozen for years;
• Significant concerns about changes to redundancy payments.

Your bargaining team is scheduled to meet with NextSense next Thursday 16 September. Following that meeting we will schedule an HSU member meeting via Zoom to go through NextSense’s responses so far and determine our next steps. We will send out details for this meeting early next week.

The HSU will keep bargaining to try and reach an agreement that everyone can be comfortable with. However, if NextSense move to take the agreement to ballot before HSU members are satisfied, we will actively encourage all HSU members to vote accordingly.   

Remember, the new agreement can only be accepted if a majority of people who vote say ‘yes’. If HSU members are not happy with the agreement, we will need to encourage everyone to vote ‘no’ to keep bargaining for a better deal. The power is in your hands.

If you have any questions, please contact your HSU delegate or your Organiser. If your colleagues are not yet HSU members, please encourage them to join the union today by visiting www.hsu.asn.au/join or by calling 1300 478 679.