Job Security for Court Security

• General News
• 6th June 2018

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In 2015 it was announced that the Western Australian State’s Court Security & Custodial Services (CS&CS) contract was being put out to re-tender.  

The, then Court Security officers, had been put in a similar position before when their employer, G4S was dumped in 2011 and replaced with Serco as their employer.

In October 2016, the Department of Corrective Services awarded the five-year $258 million contract to Broadspectrum. A Spanish owned multi-national.

The new contract was negotiated for $36 million less than the previous contract.

As there was no legal transmission of business any of the workers’ accrued entitlements like long service leave or personal leave were not transferred to this new contract.

The workers’ had to reapply for their jobs and had to face the insecurity of being out of work, or only being offered casual positions.

To make matters worse, their new employer came with their own agreement, known as the Justice Business Unit (or JBU) agreement.

Broadspectrum’s JBU agreement was voted on years before by three casual employees with no connection to the Court Security and Custodial Services in Western Australia whatsoever.

The three non-union casuals who made the agreement had no stake in the CS&CS, yet their agreement set the terms and conditions to work at the courts.

It was thrown out of the Commission by the full bench after several appeals by the company.

The officers applied to the Commission with a petition for a Majority Support Determination (MSD).

The success of this Determination at the Commission meant the officers were allowed to bargain for an agreement.

However, in the company’s tactics to maintain power over the workforce, Broadspectrum’s latest deal put forward divides officers into 2 tiers.

Ex-serco officers will receive more than the new employees from Broadspectrum who gained employment from March 2017.

Allowances for working in regional courts have also been torn out of the current offer.

That will only detract from retaining talented officers working security in regional courts.

The decisions of the Barnett State Government and Broadspectrum to undercut the wages of these workers has a huge, far reaching impact to the communities that rely on the risk these officers undertake every day.

The Broadspectrum officers are at a point where industrial action is imminent.

Broadspectrum will continue to stall on negotiating what these workers’ rightfully deserve until these officers have the opportunity to prove how necessary their jobs are.

They should be remunerated adequately for the job they do and are prepared to fight for what they are entitled to.

WHAT DO WE WANT THEM TO DO?

1. Broadspectrum workers deserve the right to a fair go, which means negotiating a fair agreement, where all workers are paid equally, and remunerated adequately for their services
2. The WA State Government needs to end the race to the bottom by ensuring contracts are awarded to those bids that provide the overall most economic benefits, rather than just an assessment of cheapest cost. Governments should be using their purchasing power to secure jobs.
3. The WA State Government needs to implement changes to provide greater job security to Government contracted workers through ensuring portability of all entitlements, especially long service leave and redundancy when Government contracts are awarded to another contractor. And review of the legislation for transmission of business for State Government contracts to ensure that all these employees’ years’ of service are recognised.