Late last week Metro management sent out a notice confirming that their stakeholder partners MTR Corporation, UGL and John Holland will be going their separate ways for the new MR5 franchise agreement bid.
Regardless of who the successful operator will be for the new MR5 contract your Metro Enterprise Agreement will continue to apply and your accrued entitlements including Long Service Leave, Annual Leave, and Bonus Days, will carry forward to the new franchise operator.
Job Security provisions, pay rises, classifications, training obligations and other measures that are covered under your Metro Rail Operations EA will also carry forward. This also includes obligations to maintain Station Control Desks and Booking Offices.
The clause titled Continuity of Service recognises the rights of members to bring across their accruals regardless of the number of consecutive operators that members have worked for.
These rights and obligations on the employer to protect your basic industrial rights happened because of the lengthy 12-month industrial campaign that the RTBU took as far back as 1997.
Without that successful fight, we would not have the same transmission and continuity of service rights that we have now and it was this action that protected what were traditionally public sector conditions transmitted to the new Franchise operators.
Since 1998 members rights have been protected and evolved under numerous consecutive EAs with these protection clauses having stood the test of time again and again including under previous regimes such as Connex, National Express, Connex (again) and Metro Trains Melbourne.
In early December 2002 a major test of these clauses was put forward when UK operator National Express spat the dummy and threw back the keys to the network. This threw the future transport services across the network into doubt as National Express shareholders started eyeing off members’ accrued entitlements to pay for the organisation’s debts.
It really showed the united power of the RTBU (then called the Public Transport Union) that pressured the government of the day to guarantee members’ entitlements and jobs and to ensure that continuity of service for our members and the continued operation of the wider network.
Any transition to a new operator can cause confusion especially to members who have not seen this process before, but rest assured with the combined experience of your officials at the RTBU we will continue to navigate change to ensure members are protected.
As this is still early in the franchise process and there is a long way to go yet we will keep members up to date on progress and have meetings of members once there is more information around the new MR5 franchise.
