Brisbane bus strike ‘postponed’ after council pay deal reached

A crippling peak-hour Brisbane bus strike planned for Friday has been canned, at least for now, after last-gasp talks saw a major breakthrough. It comes after up to 1000 council workers stopped work on Thursday.

A crippling peak-hour Brisbane bus strike planned for Friday has been postponed after a last-moment deal on pay and conditions with unions covering council’s 80000 staff.

The news came after multiple bus services were delayed Thursday afternoon as 1000 members of The Services Union walked off the job.

Thursday’s rally of Brisbane City Council workers. Picture: John Gass

They included staff at a coordination centre where bus drivers radioed in for help.

Council on Thursday slightly increased its pay offer in the second year of the deal and made other changes after a marathon four-month slog before the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission.

“Our council is committed to striking the right balance between delivering great services to Brisbane residents while living within our means to keep costs down,’’ finance committee chair and Deputy Mayor Fiona Cunningham said on Thursday afternoon.

“The wage agreement we have reached ensures council staff will receive a pay rise well above inflation but well below the outlandish initial claims by unions.

“We strongly believe if current legislation allowed us to directly ballot our staff, this agreement would have been finalised months ago and residents would not have been inconvenienced by union strike action.

“This fair and reasonable outcome allows us to keep costs down for residents and continue delivering the services and infrastructure needed to keep Brisbane moving.’’

Fiona Cunningham. Picture: File photo/Brisbane City Council/Nat Dixon

The unions had been fighting for 4.35 per cent a year more for two years, plus guarantees on redundancy conditions and other changes.

The new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement would instead provide a pay rise of 7.35 per cent over two years, with pay backdated until October 8 last year.

Backpay was a key sticking point for unions which estimated $2.5m was owed to its members.

In the first year of the EBA council staff would get a 3.75 per cent rise, compared with the current 2.4 per cent annual inflation rate.

They would receive another 3.6 per cent in the second year, an increase of 0.6 per cent on council’s previous offer.

The unions initially demanded a 12 per cent pay rise over two years.

Veronica McIntosh with the youngest protester, her 12-week old grandson Rowan McIntosh. Picture: John Gass

The Services Union (TSU) lead organiser for local government, Tom Rivers, earlier told a rally in the CBD that there had been “positive movement’’ and “significant progress’’.

RTBU state secretary Tom Brown insisted they had acted in good faith throughout and had tried to give commuters as much notice as possible, including delaying a stoppage on Wednesday from 4-6pm which would have affected motorists ahead of the Kylie Minogue concert at Boondall.

Mr Brown said the union had acted in good faith by starting their industrial action with a uniform ban.

After that did not persuade council, it moved to a “work to rule’’ where overtime was not worked and then a limited strike from about 4.30-6am last week.

Most of Brisbane’s 33 libraries shut and council’s call centre took only emergency calls Thursday afternoon during the TSU stoppage from 2-4pm.

Council fire crews, food safety inspectors and works depots were also affected.

The rally was told there had been significant progress in talks with the council. Picture: John Gass

Dozens of union members arrived at Reddacliff Place in the CBD just after 2pm wielding TSU flags and placards.

As the rally began, TSU lead organiser for local government Tom Rivers advised the group that there had been positive movement and significant progress in discussions with council.

“We have got movement from Council. We’ve got movement on back pay. We’ve got slight movement on the wages and we’ve got movement on redundancy,” he said.

“The movement we got today was around job security and redundancy.

“Yesterday they said if you move to a suitable position that’s one level lower, you won’t get redundancy. Well, today, that’s different.

“Today, we’ve made sure that if you move to a suitable position that’s one level lower, you will get offered redundancy after one year. And we’ve also got an improvement in year two.”

Mr Rivers said the next stage would be to put a ballot to the union members, stating that discussion with council had been positive.

“We feel like recently, we’ve got something out of every meeting we’ve had with council,” he said.

“We have got significant movement, and it’s come off the back off us balloting our members for industrial action and then us taking industrial action.”

Mark Taylor talks to the crowd. Picture, John Gass

TSU delegate Mark Taylor said action was prompted after union members expressed concern about job security and felt they were “slipping behind” with cost of living pressures.

“They’re concerned about cost of living and that we’re slipping behind on our cost of living,” he explained.

“We haven’t had an agreement at Brisbane City Council for a number of years. We had an administrative pay rise after COVID but we haven’t had a proper EBA pay rise for a number of years.”

Attendees of the stop work rally on Thursday. Picture: John Gass

Mr Taylor said the union was eager to see a change.

“We are very keen to maintain our redundancy entitlements and to make sure that any pay rise that is agreed is backdated to the beginning of the agreement, which is last October,” he said.

“We want council to stop messing around, come back to the table, and give us an agreement.

“Then we can get back to what we love doing, which is providing good services for the people of Brisbane, working in the libraries, working in the customer service areas, giving them good waste collections and recycling collections, and providing high quality public services.”

The second-largest union covering Brisbane City Council has been locked in a bitter dispute over pay rises and conditions including redundancies.

The bus union, covering 2000 council drivers, and unions covering council’s other 5000 staff were also involved in the four-month-old dispute.