SUPERANNUATION PART 7 - ACCUMULATION FUNDS
Nearly all members will have a superannuation accumulation fund. Many will also have a defined benefit fund. We have tracked one fund for over 12 years and you may be surprised by the results.

In our special Superannuation Fact Sheet and Accumulation Funds in Covid "Fact sheet - Superannuation" we track an actual accumulation fund. This may be of interest as it covers the GFC crash in 2008 and the recovery, and the recent Covid19 crash.

Here is a question to consider. The fund still exists. What has been lost?

TELSTRA FORCED LEAVE
We wrote to Telstra as follows"

I am writing again about Telstra's push to get staff to take annual leave. Below is an email to staff which
(a) contains misleading information
(b) contains a threat to coerce staff into taking leave.
As I have pointed out before, these can constitute breaches of the FW Act (Misleading information/coercion) and/or adverse action. Specifically,
1. the team leader is being asked to identify staff in the exception management report if they exercise their legal right not to book ARL.
2. the condition applying to cashing out of leave is not a valid condition to implement
We seek that the team leader (and more importantly the higher managers driving these issues) withdraw the email and correct the email.

TELSTRA FORCED LEAVE - THE EMAIL

Team, I pulled out the leave report this morning and noted that most of you have not booked your annual leave nor the LSL yet. Thank you for those who have proactively managed their leave balance.
Pls ensure you book in your ARL and LSL by COB, Monday 29/06/20. The exception management report will be generated mid next week and I hope not to have any call outs from our team.
For those who want to cash out leave, they can do so provided that they have taken the two weeks off from April to September/October.

TELSTRA FORCED LEAVE RESPONSE

I have investigated the issue you raised below. While I agree that Hong Nguyen's message could have been clearer I refute your claim that it could be interpreted as misleading or coercive.
The full email chain (which your member can supply to you) deals with this in a clear manner. In this full email it's obvious that Hong sent two distinct messages, one for those with excessive LSL to book their 9 extra days before the end of the year, and then a more general email communicating the broader expectation Telstra has of all employees to take two weeks in lieu of no redundancies. This is consistent with my correspondence to you on the 5th May 2020, where I responded to your original email below.
Notwithstanding this Hong's comment on Cashing out of Annual Leave isn't quite communicating what it aims to do. Again it is clear that cashing out is acceptable, however it doesn't change Telstra's continued expectation that our employees take the two weeks eks leave. Hong will send a clarifying email to her team to make sure this distinction is clear.

POST SENATE INQUIRY
On June 16, the Senate referred to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 11 August 2020:

The future of Australia Post's service delivery, with particular reference to:
a. the AP (Performance Standards) Regulations 2020 and their impact on services, the Australia Post workforce and affected businesses;
b. the impact of COVID-19 on the financial position of AP and its future;
c. a sustainable plan for AP to provide:
i services that meet community needs and expectations,
ii job security for its workforce, and
iii support for regional and metropolitan licensed post offices:
d. international and domestic trends with parcels, letters and pricing; and

POST SPF
Post refused to bypass mediation. Their letter stated:

I refer to your letter dated 22 June 2010 following the recent conciliation conference for matter number C2019/7661 which was unsuccessful where the union is now seeking for this matter to proceed to arbitration. Having considered your request to waive mediation and proceed direct to arbitration, Australia Post intends to follow the steps outlined in the dispute resolution procedure which involves referring this dispute to a third-party mediator to attempt to resolve the matter.
Australia Post will be seeking to nominate an independent mediator which is separate from the FWC to conduct this mediation, although we would be supportive of having an ex-FWC member conduct this mediation.
I will shortly provide you with the name(s) of our suggested mediators and if you have any proposed mediators please provide them for our consideration, once we agree on a mediator we can then look at organising a suitable date for this mediation session.

HILLS PAY
Hills has resumed normal pay after earlier asking staff to cut pay by 15% to 25%. We challenged the move in FWC but we faced a jurisdictional issue and withdrew the application

OPTUS REDUNDANCIES
Optus has advised of 37 redundancies in several business units. Staff in affected areas would not be aware of the cuts. The areas were Product Operations, Marketing, Mobility and Voice. Some restructuring will occur. If you have any difficulties, please contact us.

SPF
We asked Post for their Covid Safe Plan. We received documents dealing with a general response but no specific plan for SPF technical members.

USEFUL QUICK LINKS
We provide these quick links so that you can quickly review previous important articles: