By Paul Oboohov
On December 1, the 50 year-old Commonwealth Employment Service will cease to exist and the Public Employment Placement Enterprise will take over its functions.
The 5000 remaining CES workers face the unenviable choice of either being employed on individual contracts in the PEPE, with worse conditions, or taking a much reduced redundancy pay-out from the Australian Public Service.
To ensure that enough staff make the transfer, it is likely that the government will force all CES staff into the PEPE. Because the PEPE is structured into a management holding company (owned, at this stage, by the government) and a PEPE operations company that employs the staff and subcontracts employment services, the employment minister, David Kemp, is able to claim that there will be no CES sackings.
It appears that the PEPE will employ only 1500 staff, with 3500 workers being transferred or induced to take the package. The new agency is seeking to apply a "greenfields" approach to industrial relations by attempting to strongarm its current "skeleton" staff into signing an Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA) .
The first draft of the AWA stipulated employment security by the month; standard hours, flexible by the fortnight; pay by individual performance assessment; unpaid maternity leave and numerous other nasties.
The PEPE management plans to sign the contract with the initial staff, have it legally certified and present it as a fait accompli to ex-CES workers. Some current PEPE staff have already told the PEPE head, Don Swan, that they are not signing the individual contract. At the same time the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs section council of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) is in the industrial commission seeking an order to have current public service awards and DEETYA agreements carry over into PEPE.
The union's hand has been strengthened by a recent victory for a CPSU ticket in an all-staff vote for representatives to negotiate certified agreements within DEETYA. DEETYA management ran non-union stooges for the positions of staff representative but failed miserably, wining just 20% of the vote.
CES staff across Australia also held a half-day stoppage on November 17 to protest the PEPE conditions. The section council is planning another half-day strike on November 27 during which union members will register en masse for the dole at Centrelink offices to show what the majority of CES staff face.
Unfortunately, the CPSU has not planned any further action. This is in keeping with the union leadership's strategy of discrete actions rather than a wider campaign which involves the members in planning the way forward. Even at this crisis point, the CPSU leadership has yet to use the weight of the whole union.
However, it is not too late to resist and sections of the CPSU are continuing to urge the leadership to mobilise the whole union for this critical fight.<>><>41559MS>n<>255D>