Mass federal public service strike action and its affect on Australians will peak on Tuesday morning as union members at 15 agencies in Canberra walk off the job for half a day.
Thousands of Canberra bureaucrats who are members of the Community and Public Sector Union will strike for the morning. Many plan to converge on the Convention Centre by 10.30am.
Union members plan to strike at the departments of Agriculture, Immigration and Border Protection (which includes Customs), Defence, Education, Employment, Environment, Human Services and Veterans’ Affairs as well as the CSIRO, Australian Tax Office, the Australian Institute of Criminology, Geoscience Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology, the National Library of Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
In 1998 an ANU survey of voter concerns found about 23 per cent felt tax was “extremely important” and only 10 per cent thought health and Medicare were. Now 19 per cent think health and Medicare are extremely important only 11 per cent are as concerned about tax.
The CPSU estimated about 6500 Canberra public servants would strike on Tuesday, meaning half of its 13,000 members in the ACT had been given permission to take protected industrial action by the Fair Work Commission.
The massive Department of Human Services has told customers to delay contacting Medicare and Centrelink this week if possible
DHS general manager Hank Jongen said the department was disappointed the CPSU was escalating its industrial action despite ongoing negotiations.
“I want to assure our customers their payments will not be affected by this industrial action, as many are automatically generated and reporting requirements for payments such as Newstart Allowance can already be done online,” Mr Jongen said.
“Our advice is – if you don’t need to contact us urgently, consider delaying your query for a later day, or use our online services or Express Plus apps to do your regular business with us.”
He said this would allow the department to help the most vulnerable people.
Striking staff at DHS are better placed than most to send a message about stalled bargaining negotiations between the Abbott government and 160,000 Commonwealth bureaucrats.
The department has one of the highest ratios of union membership – the CPSU has 15,000 members nationally who work at Human Services. Staff oversee family tax benefits payments to mums and dads and Medicare payments to the elderly.
The department’s latest offer included a salary increase of 4.15 per cent over the three-year life of the new agreement, with increases of 1.5 per cent in 2015, 1.5 per cent in 2016 and 1.15 per cent in 2017.
The offer was conditional on the department meeting the staffing ratio of executive level to Australian public service staff of 1:9 in each year.
It also offered performance-based salary advancements of up to 0.5 per cent extra in each year to eligible employees.
“Since tabling our second pay offer in February we have not been sitting idle,” Mr Jongen said.
“We have been reviewing staff feedback to look at where we may be able to make further changes to the offer that is currently on the table, and have actively been exploring every option we can, within the government’s bargaining policy, to give our staff an affordable pay offer.”