Pressure grows over CES/DSS

By Paul Oboohov

Community and Public Sector Union members in the Commonwealth Employment Service have increased pressure on the federal government to stop corporatisation of the CES.

The corporatisation would remove 8000 staff from public service coverage and conditions, and farm out large slabs of CES work to the private sector. The Department of Social Security public contact network is also to be corporatised, but nominally under public service coverage, with the possible implementation of individual contracts for new staff.

A nationwide public contact ban was imposed on the morning of November 28 in both the CES and DSS. The CPSU has received reports that 49 CES offices closed, 42 were severely disrupted and 21 were disrupted. Delegates around the country say that staff compliance with the public contact ban is increasing.

In a mood of growing confidence, CPSU members voted last week to increase the action to two half-day public contact bans per week (possibly taken as one whole day), and to conduct specific community campaign tasks during each day of the week from December 2 to 6.

Stop-work meetings will also be held immediately following the introduction of legislation to set up the government's competitive market for employment placement services in early December. These meetings will decide on further action. As a result of the new arrangements, unemployed people will receive much less service from profit-seeking job placement services, and country areas may miss out altogether.

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