mmg.com.au

Goulburn-Murray Water is continuing with its planned redundancies despite intervention by the Community and Public Sector Union.

The authority says it still expects to find up to 60 redundancies in the organisation as part of a restructure, and the union says it has obtained more options for workers and given them more time to consider their response.

G-MW will continue to identify targeted jobs, despite the union arguing that it should take voluntary redundancies.

G-MW and the union went into conciliation talks with Fair Work Australia last week.

CPSU state secretary Karen Batt said staff whose jobs were identified as being redundant now had more options.

She said they now had the opportunity to apply for transfers and retraining to other positions, and had more time to consider their options.

Ms Batt said while the union had been dealing with redundancies in the government sector recently, they had been voluntary.

‘‘The difference with G-MW is that they were compulsory.’’

She had hoped that G-MW would have reached its numerical target if it had offered voluntary redundancies with good packages.

G-MW sent letters out last week nominating the positions that were to be made redundant.

G-MW managing director Gavin Hanlon said the organisation was continuing its previously announced process of restructuring and staff would be treated in a dignified and respectful way.

He said voluntary redundancies would not have allowed G-MW to retain the skill sets it needed and could have resulted in G-MW having to go through a re-employment process.

Staff will have until January 18 to consider their options.

As to the timing at Christmas, Mr Hanlon said the staff consultation committee was asked about whether the process should be delayed and he said the response had been that they wanted the changes carried out as quickly as possible.

The CPSU has retained the right to go back to Fair Work Australia if it is unhappy with any developments this week.