We previously reported on the action taken by workers at QLD’s Underwood Mail Centre, emailing key stakeholders in Post and the Federal Government, exposing serious safety concerns and the bad management practices that exist in the workplace.
Despite many attempts to get to the bottom of safety concerns raised by employees at Underwood, Australia Post has failed to provide any reasonable answers to the CEPU Divisional (National) Office who have recently represented the issue to Post on a National level.
Still sulking over the fact that employees had to turn to an anonymous email campaign to get their message across about the state of affairs at Underwood Mail Centre, senior Post management just stonewall. Their latest effort can be read by clicking here.
After it was clear we’d get nowhere fast by talking with management, the CEPU lodged a dispute in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. You can read our notice by clicking here
Update : Post writes to AIRC objecting to hearing (4 July, 2008)
There are some interesting points worth noting:
- Australia Post claim they have a proud record on safety – but it’s been a month since we raised our concerns about the safety practices at Underwood and still no answer. That shows up how serious management is about attending to safety concerns.
- Despite laws across the country protecting “whistleblowers”, management has been on a witch hunt to work out who sent the anonymous emails – using up valuable time that could have been dedicated to sorting out the problems at Underwood.
- Whenever there is a problem within Post, corporate management fall straight in line with their state and local managers. This reflects the real way decisions are made in Post – state management are there to make the mistakes and corporate management is there to back them up. That’s one impressive conga-line of decision making prowess right there…
- Finally, during the EBA7 talks, senior management said that if the union has problems with the way Post manages our concerns “take it up at the Commission”. That’s an invitation we are happy to take up – we have six or seven disputes running as we speak – but what a waste of time, when compared to the option of sensible parties sitting round a table to apply commonsense solutions to these problems.
When employees at Sydney West Letters Facility were last year faced with consistent bad management behaviour, they took it upon themselves to throw their hands in the air and walked off the job.
They were certainly sending a message to the bad bosses of “enough is enough”.
When Post employees at Dandenong (Victoria) felt they could get nowhere on their concerns with management over planned roster changes, over 300 employees last week took action and walked off the job.
Nearly 200 Underwood staff in their own time met offsite to vent their anger against the bad boss treatment.
Last Saturday, a packed meeting of members in Launceston demanded Post act on their grievances against the bad boss treatment in Tasmania.
Something is certainly wrong with the way management are treating its employees in Australia Post.
Management gets paid regular cash bonus that are recognized for superannuation purposes to respond to problems by saying if you don’t like it then: “take us to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission”.
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