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Autumn 2002

Cosmos's Cosmic Agreement

HACSU has won another breakthrough agreement with disability services provider Cosmos, providing much needed annual leave flexibility, sick leave and annual leave for part-timers on the loaded rate, a camp allowance, pay improvements and other benefits.

Significantly, the Cosmos agreement allows members to take annual leave outside the rigid, designated shutdown periods. Lack of flexibility for annual leave has traditionally been a bone of contention with disability services members.

Now members are able to structure their pay so they can take annual leave outside shutdown periods. Also, under the new agreement, part time or causal workers in receipt of the 20% loading can opt not to get the 20% loading and receive sick leave and holiday pay. Casual workers in receipt of the 20% loading previously could not get annual leave and sick leave and had to go without pay during this
period.

On top of this Cosmos members have won the right to salary packaging and a "camping allowance".

The camping allowance establishes another benchmark in the industry. Most staff working in disability services take clients away on camps and excursions. Often this is in their own time and members either don't get paid for it, or have to negotiate what they can get on a case by case basis, as there are no provisions covering this in the award. Under the new agreement a rate of pay is now set for these activities, with time in lieu provisions.

The HACSU Organiser responsible for Cosmos, Craig Stringer, hailed the agreement - worked out under the auspices of Cosmos's Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) - as providing important breakthroughs for the industry and said these benefits would be flowed on to the rest of the industry in time. "I would like to congratulate all the members at Cosmos and also the employer," Craig said.

"We all worked very hard on this agreement and it is amazing how quickly it came together. It shows what cooperation can achieve within a consultative forum." "The employer believes with these extra conditions not only will it be a benefit to the workforce but Cosmos will be better able to keep staff and use the agreement to attract other staff in the future."

Cosmos HACSU member and member of the JCC, Leeane Boulter, said she was very pleased with the new agreement and had learnt a lot from the process. "The best part of the agreement is the salary sacrifice, which means we get a bit of a pay rise but also the provisions for extra holidays. You need the holidays or else you get burnt out," Leeane said. "The provisions for casuals are also good. Before the casuals had to go without pay during shutdown periods. I have learned heaps from the process. Before I knew nothing about salary packaging and policies and how the organisation worked. I learnt a lot about how the organisation runs, about little things like meeting procedure, writing minutes, and it's good to do stuff that benefits other staff as well."

Mark Krause, the Chair of the JCC, HACSU member and a Team Leader at Cosmos also thought the agreement was very good. "It's very positive. We get a lot more flexibility. We've come out of it very well. I would like to highlight how cooperative everyone has been. The joint approach has been great. We started off looking at salary packaging, then added other things that were to the benefit of employees and it was all fixed very quickly."
Congratulations to everyone at Cosmos.