Phil Shannon
CANBERRA — Members of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) employed in the Commonwealth Department of Human Services & Health (HSH) have completed a series of meetings on the lack of progress in achieving an agency bargaining wage rise in the department.
Meetings in central office in Canberra (which contains the vast majority of union members) and in the state offices unanimously rejected the department's May 1994 offer of 2% because it offered no guarantees against staff cuts funding the wage rise, contained proposals which would give management greater control over employees and reduced the entitlements of senior officer employees.
A motion was also passed overwhelmingly banning staff cooperation with future organisational change in the department unless agreement is reached with the union.
The future of agency bargaining in HSH, however, remains unclear. The national officials of the CPSU (in line as usual with ALP government policy) remain committed to achieving an agency bargaining deal in HSH. By not proposing to withdraw from agency bargaining negotiations, and in fact in some state meetings proposing industrial action in support of an agency bargaining deal, they keep open the possibility that a deal could be forced through at some time during 1995.
The ACT meeting passed a motion from the floor, calling for the CPSU's withdrawal from all future negotiations and seeking the equalisation of HSH pay rates and conditions with those in other departments through the union's 1995 claim.
Speakers at the ACT meeting argued that funding for an agency bargaining wage rise was incompatible with protecting the wages and working conditions of members, and with providing quality public services, because the department has no public assets to sell off to fund a wage rise (nor should it even if it did), can not raise funds through revenue generation, and members who are already working to the limit of past "efficiency" gains will not wear jobs cuts as the funding mechanism.
The national delegates will now review the outcome of the meetings. Agency bargaining has not quite been killed off in HSH, but it is now noticeably limping in its painful two-year non-progress in the department. Its grave beckons but CPSU members should beware the ability of the national officials to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
[Phil Shannon is co-chair of the CPSU delegates committee in central office HSH.]