Union seeks termination of TAFE enterprise agreements

By Brenda Seymour

Federation has written to the Department of Education and Training seeking to terminate TAFE enterprise agreements.

The NSW Government amended NSW legislation so employees at TAFE were not employed by TAFE but by the Crown and therefore not employed by a corporation for the purposes of the WorkChoices legislation.

In these circumstances there appears to be no residual benefit to having enterprise agreements as well as awards for TAFE employees.

The TAFE awards have now been amended to correct certain errors and add various provisions arising from state test cases. Therefore, the TAFE awards now have superior conditions to the TAFE agreements. However, the Industrial Relations Act states: "The provisions of an enterprise agreement prevail over the provisions of any State award of the Commission that deal with the same matters in so far as the provisions of the State award apply to a person bound by the enterprise agreement. This subsection is subject to the terms of the enterprise agreement."

Hence to the extent that the various provisions in the TAFE awards arising from test cases et cetera deal with matters that are already dealt with in the TAFE enterprise agreements, the TAFE agreement provisions rather than the TAFE award provisions will prevail. As this will be an ongoing problem with any further amendments that are made to the awards, and as the enterprise agreements no longer serve any useful purpose, Federation has written to the Department to terminate the agreements.

Brenda Seymour is the Assistant General Secretary (Research and Industrial).

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Last Modified: 24 Aug 2006