What the agreement trades off

What the agreement trades off

The following is a list of concerns about the proposed public service agreement reprinted from a leaflet published by the ACT branch of the CPSU. It has been slightly abridged.

• Approval for Public Service Act Review: The agreement approves the PS Act Review. Further discussion will be limited to resolving issues of how rather than which changes will happen.

• New categories of employment: Continuing employees replace officers holding office. The agency secretary no longer needs to consult the Public Service Commission or unions in establishing fixed term contracts. These can be up to five years, or longer. The union is consulted annually on the proportion of long term fixed term employees. There is no ceiling.

• Pay agreement funded by Budget cuts: This year's federal Budget instituted harsh running cost cuts of up to 2 per cent in addition to the recurrent efficiency dividend cut of 1 per cent. These arbitrary cuts will create savings that will be used to fund our salary increases — which means that the agreement effectively proposes that we lose jobs in exchange for pay. The CPSU's own estimates are that the federal Budget will result in job losses in the thousands, possibly as many as 4000. The cuts amount to $640 million over four years.

• Termination of employment: These changes take away appeal processes available to public servants through the Merit Protection Review Agency. Under the proposed arrangements the management decision to dismiss a worker stands unless an Industrial Relations Commission appeal is successful. Under current provisions the worker remains in employment until the appeal concludes.

• Traineeships: New entry level training arrangements will replace ASO 1 recruitment. This means that trainees and their discounted wages will be the new base grade.

• Performance based pay: A new performance based pay scheme is being introduced which can be agreed with the majority of senior officer staff, not union members.

• Reducing stress compensation claims: The agreement places emphasis on reducing the "cost of stress-related compensation claims." The causes of stress receive little attention. In this the agreement repeats the approach of the 1992 agreement to absenteeism, looking at the symptom rather than the problem.

• Shorter break between shifts: For shift workers, the break between shifts has been reduced from 10 hours to 8 hours plus travelling time. So much for winding down after work, meeting family or having a shower.

• Senior officer overtime: Senior officer overtime and restriction allowances will be devolved to the Agency level, which may impact SITOC overtime arrangements.

• Backhand support to agency bargaining: Members should reject the claims made in clause 15 of the agreement. Decentralised industrial arrangements in the APS over recent years have led to unequal outcomes on pay and conditions; a resource intensive and divisive system of pay and conditions; and trade-offs that have resulted in job losses and diminished conditions. Reject the agency bargaining myth, and take agency bargaining off the agenda for good.