DEET workers fight for job
By Frances Berney Members of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) in the Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) have been involved in an ongoing dispute with DEET since they took strike action in February against proposed staffing cuts. The cuts in DEET have been proposed despite the fact that the department has responsibility for carrying out the government's White Paper employment initiatives, and are in line with Labor government attacks on public service jobs in several departments including Social Security, Veteran's Affairs and Administrative Services. CPSU members in DEET nationally are battling the cuts. Department staffing proposals before the last federal budget showed that DEET would lose 3000 jobs over the next three years. Some jobs would go by "natural attrition" — a euphemism for not filling vacant positions when employees leave; others by "streamlining" — giving staff more to do to prove their efficiency — and a few would be lost through voluntary redundancies. The CPSU lodged a dispute with the Australian Industrial Relations Commission when it was not allocated any extra funding to implement the White Paper's employment proposals, included the establishment of another government employment body in DEET apart from the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES). The new body, Employment Assistance Australia (EAA), is to case manage the long-term unemployed. Some case managers in EAA currently have responsibility for up to 120 people, to whom they are expected to give intensive attention and regular interviews. The success rate of case managers in the public service is monitored by the Employment Services Regulatory Authority (another White Paper innovation) which compares the success rate of public service case managers against private sector case managers. Commissioner Cox ruled on May 26 that DEET should provide an extra 120 staff to the client service delivery network to fulfil the initiatives of the White Paper. The White Paper, which has been sold to industry and unions as a job creation scheme, pushes the fiction that people are unemployed only because of a lack of training or motivation. It refuses to acknowledge the lack of job opportunities. The White Paper gives employers a chance to take a government funded person from the list of long-term unemployed to "train". During this period unions pretend that these people do not perform the functions of full-time employees, while employers use them as cheap labour, expendable at the end of their training period (after which another long-term unemployed person takes their place). One of the most shameful parts of the training programs instituted under the auspices of the White Paper, such as the Jobskills program, is that after the training period, the long-term unemployed return to the bottom of the unemployed list. This takes them off the priority list, and leaves them without case management assistance. While being trained in such skills as communication (some "trainees" already have post graduate degrees), these people are not considered unemployed, thereby improving the unemployment figures significantly. After the IRC ruling, DEET experimented with a variety of ways in which to provide the extra funding for the creation of the 120 new jobs. The IRC cannot rule on government funding and the minister responsible, Simon Crean, has refused to look seriously at where the extra funding will come from. DEET proposed that the extra CES jobs around the country could be created by getting rid of staff at DEET's national office in Canberra. This idea had a precedent. The CPSU had previously signed an agreement with DEET which did just that: it axed 300 jobs from DEET in the ACT and reallocated them around the country. Despite strong ACT CPSU opposition, this proposal was narrowly accepted by union members nationally. The IRC ruling was further complicated by the August budget which cut the department's funding even further. DEET proposed to the CPSU that the staffing issue could be settled by cutting 700 jobs this year, 170 from the national office in Canberra and 530 from the client service delivery network. Negotiations with the union are currently at a stalemate. CPSU members in DEET are involved in a "workload reduction campaign", so called because the CPSU does not wish to call it a "dispute" and risk the department returning to the IRC. Members around the country are becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of strong action by the union leadership against the staff cuts. DEET secretary Derek Volker received agreement from the Public Service Commissioner to offer 170 voluntary redundancies to DEET staff. This was done without consulting the union, despite DEET's claims that it had had discussions with the CPSU which had not proceeded fast enough. The voluntary redundancies, resulting in job losses from the end of September, were clearly outside the provisions of the public service's Redeployment and Retirement (Redundancy) (RRR) Award. As CPSU national official Wendy Caird stated in a members' circular on August 15, "the time frame is in clear breach of the RRR Award". She said that there was no time for union consultation, and the one month "cooling off period" which allowed staff to consider whether to accept an offer, and the one month notice prior to retirement, were all breached by Volker's actions. This was reason enough, members thought, to get stuck into DEET for breaching the award. However, the union decided against this course of action and is continuing its campaign of "workload reductions" in which members are asked to identify areas where they are overworked and stop performing these tasks. Why didn't the national CPSU leadership consider a strong industrial reaction to Volker's actions? One reason is the view that public servants have lost the fight already. Yet CPSU members around the country are implementing bans in response to the lack of staff. Most CES offices and Student Assistance Centres have Wednesday afternoon closures in place, with no public contact before 9am and after 4pm on other days. Functions associated with the White Paper initiatives have been banned in some CES offices. Assistance to contracted case managers is being cut, and other actions are in place throughout the department. CPSU members are justified in feeling angry about the actions of the government, the department, and the lack of a strong response from their union leadership. In deciding not to challenge DEET's actions, the CPSU leadership has cleared the way for further job cuts in the department. The lack of fight-back has also set a dangerous precedent for members of other government departments, the heads of which are considering staff cuts as a means of alleviating their budget problems.