BARGAINING COUNCIL FOR THE CIVIL ENGINEERING INDUSTRY | MANDATE REQUIRED

The Construction Industry Retirement Benefit Fund (CIRBF) collective agreement will be expiring at the end of August 2023.

In this regard, the parties to the Council are looking at renewing the current agreement, which can be viewed here for reference, in the similar or same terms for a period of 5 years thereby expiring in August 2028. In addition to the agreement in the main, organised labour has proposed the addition of the following items to the agreement:

  1. In the current guise, should an employer or member belong to another retirement fund, they are not obliged to belong to the CIRBF. The proposal from organised labour is to amend this so that it is compulsory for all employers to belong to the CIRBF and should they not wish to they would need to apply for an exemption in this regard. Further to this, there has been a proposed 12-month phase-in plan put forward whereby employers who currently belong to other funds, will be given 12 months to align themselves with the CIRBF and the relevant contributions etc.
  2. In addition, at Clause 5.1 there is a proposal to amend the 12-month period to six months.

While there are a few proposed cosmetic changes, these will not have any material effect on the collective agreement.

CEO is requesting a mandate on whether to agree to the CIRBF agreement as a whole as well as a mandate pertaining to the proposed changes. We require this mandate to be completed by no later than 07 June 2023. Should no positive mandate be forthcoming from our members, CEO will not agree to the CIRBF agreement and neither will CEO agree to the proposed changes.