Demonstrating how your actions have changed the game, we met with SCC management representatives yesterday, and they actually did some negotiating.
 
We reiterated our position at the meeting and rejected their low wage offer of 2.5% a year for nurses and care staff and the insulting offer of just 2% for cleaning, food services and other staff. We also made it clear that workers won’t accept not being back paid and will recommence industrial action if that’s the case.
 
Pressured by your collective power, SCC revised the wage offer to 3% a year for all employees and offered to backpay this till July 2021. On top of that, they also have agreed to:

• Remove proposals to allow 10-hour shifts without agreement
• Reinstate the offer of paying for police checks and Working with Vulnerable People checks
• Drop proposals about reducing staff entitlements for the frequency of superannuation payments to your fund and the overtime payments for casuals

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SCC said they’ll reconsider their position on taking away the requirement for there to be agreed days of the week and starting finishing times in contracts for part-time employees. This is an important provision that protects you, meaning if they want to change your hours, they need to get agreement from you.

Your bargaining team made it clear that this entitlement is in the award and that Fair Work wouldn’t approve the agreement without it.

They still refuse to back down from reducing handover time to 15 minutes, and they have now removed the offer of birthday leave at the base rate.

The reason why SCC have backed down from reducing most entitlements is because of you. You should be very proud of this achievement. It is you standing up collectively that has forced them to improve the offer significantly.

You’ve stopped SCC from slashing your wages and taking away many of your entitlements. You’ve stopped them from dividing workers, and you’ve doubled the original wage offer which was an absolute insult to your hard work.

They have committed to getting us a final offer by early next week, and we’ve urged them to put their best possible offer forward. Once we have this offer, we'll hold membership meetings across the state and then you can vote on the offer. We will send out the dates and times of these meetings next week.

Again, well done to everyone, and we’re looking forward to catching you up soon!