SFWU Must be Up Front - Strike is Not About Money

Union Demands

The SFWU's plan to strike against Spotless Services on Thursday because Spotless has resisted agreeing to replicate the terms of the employment agreement the SFWU has agreed with the DHBs. This is despite Spotless having already agreed to pass all additional DHB funds onto its staff, despite Spotless proposing to bring its 17 contracts together as a single agreement, and despite Spotless not yet having even seen the DHB agreement it is expected to replicate.

"The SFWU needs to be up front about the reasons for this strike. It is neither striking for money nor for a MECA. This strike is about forcing Spotless to replicate the terms of the employment agreement it has reached with the DHBs - an agreement which took months to negotiate, but which Spotless has not even seen," says Spotless Services General Manager, Healthcare, Mark Russell.

"It is the SFWU that is holding up payment of the $16 million, to bolster its industrial muscle - not Spotless.

"Union members need to understand that a strike will not have any impact on total wages. The SFWU has already agreed the funding package with the DHBs, and Spotless, along with the other contractors, has already agreed to pass every cent on to its staff. This strike is not about money.

"Spotless is committed to passing every cent of extra DHB money on to staff, but we do not apologise for wanting to negotiate the specific details of salary structures and we are not going to give up that right due to this kind of industrial intimidation.

"We believe there may be a case for some differentiation of wages between different occupational groups (e.g. cleaners and orderlies). It is also a reality that some occupations are harder to attract and retain, and we want to look at competency-based salary initiatives that will improve employee skills and earning potential.

"Further to that, the SFWU only closed on an agreement with the DHBs late last week. That agreement took months of negotiation. Spotless was not involved in the DHB negotiations and we haven't seen the DHB agreement, yet the union is demanding we replicate it. That is just not reasonable," says Russell.

Spotless has committed to pass all additional hospital sector funding granted by the DHBs as a result of negotiations with the SFWU to Spotless staff.

Spotless has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the DHBs and agreed to auditing mechanisms to provide confidence and certainty that all funds are passed through to staff.

Spotless has agreed to bring together each of its seventeen hospital-specific collective agreements into one single collective agreement covering all of its hospital-based service staff.

"While the other contractors appear to have agreed to replicate the DHB terms, this is too important to Spotless. We have 2000 staff across 17 hospital sites. The DHB agreement took months to negotiate. At the very least, we need time to review the DHB agreement. But there also needs to be some willingness on the part of the SFWU to talk and negotiate. That is the nature of a bargaining process," says Russell.

Strikes and Lock Outs

The SFWU's strikes are set to begin on Thursday morning. Spotless has stressed that if the SFWU withdraws its strike notices, Spotless will also withdraw the lock out notices it issued for health and safety reasons.

"We are eager to avoid the strikes and the disruption they will cause. We have put a proposal to the SFWU and we are ready to talk. If the SFWU calls off its strikes, we will be able to withdraw the lock outs," says Russell.

The SFWU is planning rolling strikes across the hospital sector to support its industrial demands. These strikes are set to continue for at least two weeks with each individual strike taking 55 minutes in every hour - but with the strikers intending to return to their jobs for the residual five minutes in every hour.

"These strikes would have caused a huge amount of disruption at each hospital. We could not guarantee adequate levels of health and safety for patients in hospitals with striking and non-striking staff continuously coming and going and continuously interrupting their work. So, for health and safety reasons we have locked the striking SFWU members out for the period of their rolling strikes," says Russell.

Spotless has contingency plans in place at each of its hospital sites with non-striking staff adjusting shifts, and in some cases, being shifted about sites to cover the gaps.

ENDS

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