Note Printing not budging

Note Printing Australia (NPA) has stuck to its guns in a meeting with the AMWU, where it is refusing to give a higher pay rise to its workers in their dispute over a new enterprise agreement.

Tony Piccolo, assistant state secretary for the Print Division at the AMWU says, “No progress has been made at this time. The company failed to adjust any of their claims.

 “At the meeting the company said we have defined costs and savings, how we would we fund this? The negotiating team were not impressed, given that the workers had achieved all of their production goals in the last agreement and now they were being told that they need to fund their own pay rises.

“We are going out to meet our members later today to see how they feel and to see how we are going to move forward.”

Employees at the national banknote printer in Craigieburn, Vic, voted overwhelmingly to enter industrial action after months of failed negotiations over a new enterprise agreement. Staff demanded a 3.5 per cent pay rise but NPA refused to budge on their offer of 2 per cent.

Parent body Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has declined to comment.

Piccolo has called out RBA governor Philip Lowe for failing to act with his own address to a parliamentary committee in February, where Lowe the Bank would like to see wages growth across the country above three per cent.

NPA supplies the Australian government and some 18 overseas governments with banknotes.

Industrial action is starting to creep back onto then printing stage, workers at Australian Paper’s envelope manufacturing site stopped work for six weeks earlier this year in protest at new working terms and for more pay.

 

 

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