HACSU was recently told of ongoing conflict about risk management involving fatigue and when fatigue breaks would or wouldn’t be provided, and the issue of volunteer training by single Branch Station Officers arose.
 
We agree that training volunteers is a Statement of Duties criteria but don’t agree it’s required to be done outside paid duty time - it counts as work and therefore should be paid time – on shift workloads and call out workload no longer justify the BSO ‘volunteering’ arrangements.
 
There may have historically been an expectation to conduct this training in your own time but recent industrial changes, such as calculating the time spent working in the on-call period for fatigue breaks, means this time can only be considered a paid work task.
 
Our view is that volunteer training should where possible be arranged within the normal working day. If it needs to occur during an on-call period:

1. The whole training time must be paid time, including any associated travel.
2. The whole training time in the on-call period counts towards fatigue break accruals.
3. Scheduled volunteer training in an on-call period should be approved by a duty manager or the BSO Team Leader to remove any doubt that it will be paid time. Flexibility regarding 56 days’ notice is likely required for this allocation of work.

If you have questions please contact HACSUassist on 1300 800 032.