BRISBANE — Centrelink workers have overwhelmingly rejected management's new enterprise agreement. More than 70% voted against what was an attack on Centrelink workers' wages and conditions. The vote was even more emphatic in Victoria and New South Wales, where 80% and 75% respectively voted against the agreement.

The vote was a clear message that staff want to continue to be represented by their union, the Community and Public Sector Union. The CPSU ran a strong “vote no” campaign, which included two successful half-day strikes. During the campaign, the union recruited nearly 500 new members.

Centrelink management tried to portray the main issue of the vote as being simply to accept or reject Centrelink's pay offer of 12.5% over three years. Since 1998, the wages of members of the Senior Executive Service (management) have increased by between 25% and 46%. They have also received annual performance bonuses of 4%. In the same period, Centrelink workers have received only a 9% increase.

Centrelink management also refused to backdate the pay offer, thereby lessening its value to workers. The current agreement expired on July 1.

While staff were not happy with the pay offer, it is clear that workers were more concerned with Centrelink's attempts to undermine working conditions. These included extending opening hours with no extra staff, changing personal leave provisions, requiring medical certificates after five days' absence, imposing unequal pay conditions for employees in new business areas (such as the passports call centre) and restricting the availability of part-time work by removing the provision that requests will be not be unreasonably opposed.

Centrelink also tried to make this a non-union agreement by using the provisions of the industrial laws that allow a poll of all employees rather than negotiating with the workers' union.

This meant that the CPSU, the main union covering Centrelink, would have been locked out of the agreement. Management throughout the campaign argued that the CPSU would not have been locked out. This argument was rather difficult to maintain when workplace delegates had their facilities withdrawn and access to the CPSU web site blocked.

Management has consistently told staff that Centrelink needs to remain competitive or it will lose business. The only way to do this is to increase productivity, it is claimed. Despite Centrelink having increased productivity by over 20% in recent times, the drive continues.

Last year, a new private player entered the Australian market, the largest for-profit services provider in the US: Maximus Inc. It provides privatised services for governments, such as welfare administration and job programs. It bought out Leonie Green and Associates, one of the large Australian Job Network agencies that receives substantial funding from the federal government. Leonie Green, who continues to head the agency, recently was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald as saying: “Long term, [Maximus's future] is very much driven by government direction in outsourcing. Ultimately, if Centrelink is privatised, Maximus would be very well suited to help.”

Centrelink is likely to drag out the process of putting in place a new enterprise agreement. Management is gambling that its workers will eventually cave in and accept the much-needed pay increase.

Union activists are insisting on a deadline for finalising negotiations, such as February 1, to put an end to Centrelink's continued stalling. They are also opposed to Centrelink's attack on hard-won conditions and are demanding a 15% pay rise, backdated to July 1. One of the problems with the campaign so far stems from the CPSU leadership's unwillingness to allow it members to determine the direction of the campaign.

At the beginning of the discussions around the enterprise agreement, any talk of industrial action was jumped on by the union leadership. It wasn't until feedback sessions with members clearly indicated that they wanted to reject the offered agreement and were prepared to take industrial action that talk of an industrial campaign emerged from the CPSU section council.

So far, it has been section council that has driven the campaign. While this has been positive, activists argue that it would be better if the campaign decisions involved all members. For example, mass meetings to discuss and endorse proposals would be one way to empower and encourage an emerging layer of active members. However, mass meetings are only one tool to build union strength. Local organising committees or working groups could be set up to run the campaign locally.

From Green Left Weekly, January 15, 2003.
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