With pay day just around the corner, I called the local compliance officer of the National Bargaining Council for the Electrical Industry to find out the current situation on the extension of the collective agreement.

The NBCEI may be carrying on with "business as usual", but right now it's clearly not.

The extension of the collective agreement to non-parties expired on 31st December 2011 - so effectively what does that mean?

Provided there is a collective agreement in place, as per section 23 of the Labour Relations Act it is binding only on the parties to that agreement.
Quite simply, non-parties are not bound by the collective agreement at the moment.

So for parties to the collective agreement, I guess it is business as usual. The question is, what should non-parties be doing right now?
Do we deduct and pay over contributions as in the past, or stop?

I suppose the big question is - is the Minister of Labour going to grant the application for extension or not?

If we stop paying, it'll be quite a PITA if the Minister suddenly does grant the extension and backdates its effective date.

Any thoughts, anyone?