The joint SEA-Unite/SFWU teams put their claims before SKYCITY on Tuesday 13 May. This was the first of the weekly negotiation sessions planned. Updates will be prepared after each meeting.
5 sub groups have been established to work through the claims. These include part time & casuals; disciplinary processes; a draft CEA and Bargaining Process Agreement; union protocols and rights; salary inclusion. A written explanation for each of our claims is being finalised this week.
Interestingly SKYCITY has offered non-union members 4%. But that doesn't come into force until 1 August. This offer to too low for us to accept for our members.
We will be expecting to win a bigger pay rise, including service steps and other conditions. Because of SKYCITY's offer, anything more than 4% negotiated by us does not apply to non-union members. Of course if they join us this month anything extra negotiated by the union will apply.
Make sure your details (mobile number, email address) are updated so we can contact you with information about progress in negotiations, stopwork meetings or strikes (if and when they may become necessary). Lieu days should be saved up - you may have a use for them during this period. Shift-based leave is your legal right to cash up when you need it - which may be during the contract negotiations.
Welcome to all new SEA-Unite members.
Thanks to everyone who has helped on this campaign. Since the stopwork meeting on April 17 we have signed up 121 new members. We now have 3 weeks recruiting left for part one of this campaign. Incentive prizes for members who have recruited will be given on June 30.
SEA is appealing the decision to give Ely and Paz Corcuera (Cleaning Services) warnings for alleged misconduct in relation to their leave earlier in the year.
Both had returned to the Philippines for a holiday and to visit family. Their tickets show the return date they had notified the company for.
While there, their grand daughter was admitted into intensive care with life-threatening Dengue Fever.
Pita Phillips from Security was also on holiday there and visited the family and child in hospital.
Ely and Paz tried to notify another employee (Amy) to pass on the message to their managers that their return date had to be postponed a couple of weeks given the urgent situation and some difficulties arranging new flights.
They were staying on an island that didn't have good communication lines and the best way to get a message through was to leave a message for Amy to ring them. Amy rang Ely and Paz back that night,
confirmed the message, and passed it on to their manager Peter Iese.
When they returned they were both called in to a disciplinary. They were accused of failing the follow appropriate procedures which is to speak to managers directly.
This is completely callous, outrageous action. Rather than sympathy and support after a difficult period when their grand daughters life was in danger they were subject to a humiliating disciplinary meeting.
Both workers have been with the company for 11 years.
Despite the charge against them being the same Ely was issued with a written warning and Paz a final written warning!
SEA Unite asked HR for the decision to be reviewed. Paz's final was reduced to a written warning but this is still not good enough. The warnings should be withdrawn altogether and replaced with a simple counselling.
While it is company policy for staff to contact managers directly over absences this was an exceptional circumstance given where they and the pressure and distraction of the medical emergency their grandchild was facing and some consideration should have given to that.
There is also no way staff can fully know and understand company policy and procedures when no one outside management has any access to any document explaining what these are!
All we are asking is that the company display some human compassion taking into account their length of service and that the company was fully informed of the situation even though it was through another employee.
On Saturday March 22 Darren Samuels was supervising a dealer in VIP. A mistake was made by the dealer that wasn't immediately picked up.
The mistake he did not pick up was one all the Gaming Supervisors we have spoken to have said would be missed in 9 out of 10 cases as it involved dealing the correct card to the correct puck in Baccarat. The mistake was that the puck was in the wrong place. All supervisors agreed this is a difficult one to pick up, especially if you have a tired dealer who may not be calling correctly.
Darren is a supervisor who has been at SkyCity for 12 years.
Following the incident he continued to supervise until his dismissal which clearly indicates the company did not see him as a threat. They continued to have confidence he could do his job - even in VIP. On the day of the disciplinary he was asked to supervise 3 Baccarat and a Roulette in VIP!
In the disciplinary other alleged Ômistakes' were raised. These were not in the allegations contained in the Ôyour rights' letter. The Union delegate Derek James pointed out that the company was wrong to be raising these other matters (involving notes to file) which weren't the subject of a disciplinary hearing where the member had the right to respond.
At the meeting to hear the outcome of the disciplinary we reminded the company that we should only be dealing with the incident cited in the letter. When Jimmy Gifford (Table Games Area manager Higher Duties) announced the decision to dismiss he said that because of Ôthis incident, and the history of incidents along these lines, we are dismissing you as of today.' In our view bringing up other matters he had no chance to respond to was a breach of procedure.
When we asked to view the footage of the incident we were told that it had been wiped! We have now been told the company that Ôwe have reviewed our processes around keeping tapes that may be required as part of a review of disciplinary action to ensure that the tapes are retained.' They have only figured out you need to keep tapes of disciplinary incidents after being open 12 years!
The company attempt to purge some SEA-Unite members from their casual roles in Gaming Machines has been stopped. The company has been purging casual staff across departments if they can't meet new regular work demands or haven't worked for a period. In Gaming Machines the people purged had worked in recent months but hadn't been paid! This meant there was no record of their working and it took some effort to force the company to acknowledge they had indeed worked and met the requirements of their casual contract.
We are still discussing with company how much back pay workers will receive for the unpaid extra hours they were working to finish their excessive room quotas each day. It's great this is reaching the final stages and our members will be getting some money soon.
All computer course graduates are invited to the Graduation on July 12 at the Te Wananga South Auckland Campus, 15 Canning Crescent, Mangere.
Contact Stacey or Gwen if you have changed address.
0800 355553 extention 8721 for Stacey.
0800 355553 extention 8720 for Gwen.
Level 2 & 3 Computer courses start June 16th.
Level 4 Computer courses start July 21st.
Enrol now. Phone 0800 2 Unite
4 SEA-Unite members took part in a Council of Trade Unions course for new migrant workers. This involved migrant workers legal rights with representatives of the Labour Department, and the opportunity to mix it with workers from other industries. If you want to know more speak to:
Olivia Cruz - Table Games
Bennie Atilano - Security
Bowie Hughes - Gaming Machines
Savio D'Souza - Gaming Machines
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