As you would be aware, earlier this week we gave EFA notice of 4 employee claim actions that commenced earlier today.
The four actions are:
- A ban on working on the following days as scheduled in the pilots’ initially published roster:
rostered days off;
non-work days for part time employees;
annual leave days; and
long service leave days.
- A ban on being contactable by EFA unless on a rostered duty or during a reserve period. This includes that a pilot will not answer phone calls, acknowledge texts, acknowledge updates to their roster, acknowledge emails or respond to any other form of communication unless they are on a rostered duty or in a designated reserve period.
- A ban on signing on within 120 minutes of being called in off a reserve period.
- A ban on reporting and/or performing any work duties before the scheduled sign-on time for a duty.
Following notification of these actions, EFA published an update titled (Enterprise Agreement Bargaining | Update No. 17 | 01 July 2025).
This update was incorrect. Specifically, the following statement in the EFA update (repeated below) is incorrect (underlining added):
What does the ban on being contactable by EFA unless on a rostered duty or reserve period mean?
You need to be contactable from the time you sign-on in your EFA base to the time you sign-off in your EFA base. Pilots implementing this ban also need to be contactable when on reserve.
As you will all know, a rostered duty period occurs between a sign-on and sign-off regardless of whether that sign-on and sign-off occurs in the pilot’s EFA base or outside their EFA base.
On 2 July 2025 we wrote to EFA requesting they immediately correct the update. For a copy of this correspondence – click here.
Yesterday EFA responded that they maintained their position and refused to correct their communications.
Today we informed EFA that our position remains that a “rostered duty” is the period between a pilot’s sign-on and sign-off regardless of whether that sign-on and sign-off occurs in the pilot’s EFA base or outside their EFA base. We also advised that we will be communicating our position on this issue to members later today.
Again, we request that all members participate in the four bans listed above which commenced today.
Despite the update from EFA, for the purposes of the contactability ban (action No. 2 in the list above) we confirm that a “rostered duty” is the time between sign-on and sign-off, not the period you are away from your base.
Our next bargaining meeting with EFA is still scheduled for next week (Tuesday 8 July 2025 in Sydney).
Thank you again for your ongoing support as we work to achieve a fair and reasonable agreement at EFA.
If you have any questions on the above, please contact us directly or Simon Lutton at the AFAP on mobile: 0419 482 582 or email simon@afap.org.au.
Yours sincerely
Susha Semenikow and Dean McMahon
AFAP EFA Pilot Representatives