Nick Everett, Canberra
Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) members in the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) have voted overwhelmingly in favour of an offer by DEWR management for a new union certified agreement. This opens the way for an all-staff ballot next month. Certification of the agreement is expected in November.
The deal comes nine months after the expiry of the old agreement. Over that time, CPSU members in DEWR defeated an attempt by DEWR management to impose a non-union agreement and rallied in several cities. In August, members in Canberra marched on the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to demand access to the AIRC to resolve disputes arising under the new agreement.
The final concessions from DEWR that made the deal possible — employee access to the AIRC to resolve disputes and redundancy provisions for older workers — were the same issues that stalled negotiations in 2002.
The new agreement offers staff minimum pay increases of 4% per annum during the three-year agreement, while providing for performance-based pay increases of up to 3.5% per annum. However, the initial 4% pay increase will take effect from the date of the agreement's certification (expected in November), and will not be backdated to compensate staff for nearly two years since a pay increase.
A major win in this agreement is the provision for 14 weeks' paid maternity leave as well as two weeks' paid paternity leave. However, staff covered by the collective agreement will have to wait four weeks to receive "temporary performance loading" (TPL) for staff working at a higher level (under current provisions, staff covered by the collective agreement can apply for TPL immediately).
CPSU representatives Steve Mastwyk and Emma Bradford received a standing ovation from 1700 union delegates at a September 7 meeting organised by Victorian Trades Hall. "We were fighting for a good cause and fighting as one", Bradford said. In a CPSU bulletin published the same day, division secretary Lisa Newman declared, "The strong, united and strategic campaigning by union members has achieved a terrific outcome for all DEWR employees".
The winning of a union agreement in DEWR, a departmental test case for the Howard government's industrial relations agenda, is a significant achievement. But Newman's claim that the result is a "terrific outcome" belies the fact that only a minority of DEWR staff will be covered by the new certified agreement, as Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) increasingly take hold in the department.
Since 2002, DEWR secretary Peter Boxall has aggressively promoted AWAs in place of collective bargaining agreements. Even so, when the 2002-04 agreement was certified, DEWR management had only succeeded in convincing a small minority of staff to sign AWAs.
The CPSU leadership responded to Boxall's strategy by encouraging union members to submit their AWA to the union and authorise the union to act as their AWA bargaining agent.
The CPSU's website declares that the union can "assist you to maximise your negotiated outcome; improve salaries and conditions that will be of benefit to both you and your colleagues; and work towards promoting a fair, consistent and transparent framework for AWAs". AWAs have proved to be anything but.
On April 4, AWAs were declared a requirement for all new employees. In June, workplace relations minister Kevin Andrews told parliament that 53% of DEWR's 3000 staff had voluntarily signed AWAs. But it was soon revealed that temporary staff in the department's Melbourne office were being told that they must sign an AWA to retain their jobs.
National Tertiary Education Union ACT secretary Neil Mudford's message to DEWR CPSU delegates during the campaign, was that "minister Andrews has torn the veil away from the Liberal government's rhetoric on choice, thereby providing us with a glimpse into the not-too-distant future for the rest of the Australian work force".
Paul Oboohov, Members First candidate for assistant national secretary in the upcoming CPSU elections, told Green Left Weekly that "it is time for the CPSU leadership to stop sitting on the fence and launch a serious, union-wide campaign to discourage members from signing AWAs".
[Nick Everett is a CPSU delegate in the DEWR national office.]
From Green Left Weekly, September 28, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.