By Frank Gollan
SYDNEY — National leaders of the Community and Public Service Union have joined with the federal Labor government in supporting a proposal which will cut job security and conditions for federal public servants. Voting is currently under way on the proposed deal, which is being presented as a wages agreement.
The deal gives away a large range of conditions, including permanency of employment and access to certain allowances, and greatly increases powers of department secretaries. (See box.)
For federal public servants, this is the third agreement under the enterprise bargaining system.
The first was adopted in 1992 by what was then the Public Sector Union. It introduced agency bargaining, and in the following two years the principle of equal pay and conditions for staff at the same level was dropped. Local agency bargaining agreements were used as a method of gaining union endorsement for major public service changes.
In the Department of Defence, the agreement accepted a commercialisation program under which many functions are being handed over to private companies. This is leading to job cuts.
In Veterans Affairs, the agency bargaining agreement included approval for the loss of thousands of jobs by getting rid of responsibility for repatriation hospitals.
In the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, the agreement laid the basis for inspection staff to return to a 40-hour working week, as well as okaying the 1993 federal budget funding cuts and associated job losses.
In return for such cuts, there were minor concessions, most importantly an additional two days' paid carers' leave for a number of departments. These improvements, however, are restricted to particular departments.
The second agreement, the "Interim Framework Agreement", covered the first half of 1995. Under this, the majority of pay rates for each level were equalised, giving pay rises to departments without agency agreements. In return, further conditions were lost, including the introduction of low-paying traineeships.
The third agreement is currently being voted on by CPSU members. Prior to meetings, however, this had already been trumpeted in the press as a 5.6% pay agreement.
The resolution going to union members is, "This meeting of CPSU members endorses the draft APS Wage Agreement". The actual name of the agreement is "Continuous Improvement in the Australian Public Service". The national officials are being less honest than in 1992, when union members were asked to vote that "This meeting of PSU members endorses the Draft Agreement 'Improving Productivity, Jobs and Pay in the Australian Public Service'".
This time union members are being given the impression that only wages are at stake. It will be interesting to see if this process meets the Australian Industrial Relations Commission requirement "to inform the employees who are covered by the agreement about the terms of the agreement".
Two other aspects of the current round of meetings are of extreme concern — the volume of material under consideration, and the simultaneous consideration of a complete restructure of the PSU Group of the CPSU.
The full text of the agreement comes to 137 pages, only part of which has been provided in a broadsheet to delegates (including incorrect pay scales). In addition, the agreement endorses other reviews, including the Public Service Act review, which is a further 139 pages long.
The PSU Group restructure proposal asks members to vote on a new structure without seeing the new rules or the new financial and staffing arrangements, and without knowing where they fit into the new structure.
Because the union has not circulated any alternative views on the new structure, union members' interest in the issue is almost zero. In order to convince some members to come to a meeting and vote on the issue, the deadline for union restructure votes was set to coincide with that for the enterprise agreement vote.
The preferred method for holding these meetings is for each of the union's several thousand workplace delegates to hold a workplace meeting. This means that in almost all cases a workplace delegate who has not had the opportunity to see the full text of the agreement, let alone read it, will be asking union members to consider and decide issues which affect the entire future of their employment and of their union's functioning, in half an hour or so.
For some areas, it is even worse. In the Department of Social Security, a major dispute over computer system problems is under way. An August 8 union circular sent to DSS delegates in Victoria stated: "DSS has given approval for the meeting on the APS Agreement for meeting time of 1 hour. I suggest where possible delegates use this time to vote on: 1: APS Agreement; 2: System Dispute — Partial Settlement; 3: CPSU Restructure."
To take a phrase from the new agreement, that's certainly best practice usage of one hour.