By Ben Courtice
The Tax Office section council of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), meeting in Sydney on November 13-16, discussed how to respond to the threat of compulsory redundancies in the Australian Taxation Office.
Management was to announce the names of 25 workers considered "excess" on November 19. However, an Industrial Relations Commission hearing on November 13 recommended that ATO management try to find workers in other parts of the Tax Office, and the public service generally, who want voluntary redundancy and are willing to swap with those to be sacked. A further IRC hearing is to be held on November 28.
But even if compulsory redundancies are averted this time, it will only postpone the crunch. The ATO is planning new waves of redundancies. Its tactic is to target a limited number of workers each time in the hope that those unaffected will not respond.
The section leadership hopes that the IRC's intervention will solve the immediate threat of sackings, and avoid further industrial action around the issue. But not everyone at the meeting was content to wait for the IRC outcome before deciding on further action. Chris Slee, a councillor from Melbourne's Casselden Place office, moved three motions calling for a fight for jobs.
The first motion called on the CPSU national management committee to organise stop-work meetings of all CPSU members to discuss public service-wide industrial action against sackings. The second called for an immediate walk-out and demonstrations by tax section members if and when the sackings are announced. The third called for a half-day strike and demonstrations on December 12 in which all sections would be asked to participate.
The section officials rejected these proposals and, while agreeing that if the sackings go ahead industrial action would be necessary, postponed a decision on what form of action to recommend to members.