Half-a-million Dollar Win for Registrars

UPDATE - 23rd December 2016

We are very pleased to announce that the schools on-call claim has received a further boost. We have just received offers of payment to another 20 members which takes the total of our win to $738,987.44. There are still another 20 to investigate so we are well on our way to one million dollars.

In a long battle, School Registrars have received nearly half-a-million dollars in back-pay, proving it pays to be part of your Union.

Since 2015 CPSU/CSA has been lobbying the Department of Education to provide an on-call allowance to members who’ve been undertaking relief coordination outside of working hours.

The allowance is compensation for the intrusion of being on-call, with many experiencing late night, weekend and early morning staff calls for relief coordination.

The Union raised the issue at continuous Joint Consultative Committee meetings but the department claimed they had investigated the situation, and registrars were never asked to do on-call duties.

However, 25 members stated otherwise.

They said it was an unwritten rule that comes with the job and they became the first group to act.

Some members reported they were on-call for at least five hours per workday, plus Sunday evenings saying;

“It’s taken on as part of my non-teaching staff management duties.”

In December 2015 CPSU/CSA sent a dispute letter to the department for ‘Failure to pay an on-call allowance’ and attached member statements, signaling this is a wide ranging and real issue.

While the first group waited for a formal investigation, many more affected members came forward.

The action paid off; with 23 of the 25 original registrars receiving a combined sum of over $312,000.

A second cohort of 10 members have also had their claim approved and are now awaiting a settlement of over $177,000.

Their efforts have given a combined total of nearly half-a-million in back-pay to CPSU/CSA members, with another 26 cases outstanding awaiting a response by the end of the year. 

It pays to be a part of your union.