CODE 2, VOL 37, NO 20 : 18 october 2023

FIRE SERVICE UNABLE TO PROVIDE PAYMENT INFORMATION ON CA22 ALLOWANCES!

Members who work at live fire campus or as DMO’s have rightly been asking when their allowances and provisions arising from CA22 might commence, given the agreement was certified in May 2023.

So, to be able to inform our members, your union wrote to the Commissioner on 10 October 2023 reminding him of the following payments which were negotiated for our members by our union:

• Live Fire Campus Allowance (clause 72 of CA22)
• DMO Additional Hours Allowance (clause 94(2) of CA22)
• And we added a request for information on payment of the QFES Operational Adjustment (clause 22 of CA22) since it’s due in only a few weeks.

We requested that he provide us with a further update on where QSS is at in terms of coding/configuration and let us know what the commencement date is for each of those payments.

The Fire Service responded on 16 October 2023, and amongst the usual glib assurances, informed your union that:

• They have previously instructed the QFES People Directorate to liaise directly with QSS to ensure payroll builds required to deliver new QFES CA22 components are prioritised; and
• QFES has received “verbal indications” that the Operational Allowance should be built and implemented as certified to ensure payment in the first December pay fortnight for all employees covered by QFES CA22; and
• QFES have had difficulty obtaining firm dates from QSS as to build, implementation and payment dates for live fire campus allowance and DMO payment implementation.

So, after 5 months, all the Fire Service can do is be “hopeful” that they “may be able to provide a more fulsome response” in the “near future”. This is the latest shameful demonstration of the combination of disinterest, failure, and outright refusal to ensure you and your colleagues are paid in accordance with your legal provisions, all with the usual total lack of consequences for any of those who manage this omnishambles of a payroll and wages system within and for QFES.

What more assurance do you need that the move away from QFES to the new Queensland Fire Department could not come at a better time.

John Oliver - General Secretary