Paul Gilbert, ANMF (Vic Branch) Assistant Secretary
Members should get four clear days off a fortnight, in an ideal world, but that is not always feasible.
So clause 58 of the EBA seeks to compensate members who do not get four clear days off per fortnight because of being on-call on your days off.
To add a degree of difficulty, the clause does not look at fortnights; it looks at four-week blocks.
Then to add a twist, the clause has been lifted from a Western Australian clause and assumes that people only have four weeks annual leave a year. So 52 weeks – minus four weeks annual leave – is 48 weeks. That can be separated into 12 ‘four-week’ blocks (12 x 4 = 48).
If in a 12-month period you have only one four-week block in which you did not get four clear days off in one or both fortnights, there is no compensation. But it does improve from there.
If in a 12-month period you have five four-week blocks in which you did not get four clear days off in one or both fortnights, you get one additional day’s annual leave.
As the number of four-week blocks affected over the 12 months increases, so does your entitlement to additional annual leave – to a maximum of five additional days of annual leave if you had 12 or more four-week blocks without four clear days off.
This is calculated annually by looking backwards from a date between 1 December and 30 December and reviewing the number of four-week cycles.
