CPSU members endorse new Centrelink agreement

April 23, 2003
Issue 

BY JIM MCILROY

Members of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) have voted by 61% to 39% in favour of a resolution from the union's Centrelink Section Council to endorse a new enterprise bargaining agreement, which will now be put to an all-staff vote by Centrelink, the federal government's welfare services delivery agency, in early May.

The result of the national CPSU vote, announced on April 7, means it is likely the agreement will now be carried by the staff as a whole.

The union resolution states that workplace meetings of CPSU Centrelink members "note the improvements of key areas of the draft agreement" including that "there will be no change to medical certificate requirements when taking personal leave; management will have to advise Centrelink workers in writing of how they have taken into account the needs of each worker when negotiating regular hours etc."

The resolution states that while "not being totally satisfied with the pay offer, or with extended service delivery hours, overall members accept the proposed agreement and authorise our union to seek to become a party to the draft agreement".

The most controversial issues in the agreement are the pay offer, which amounts to around 13%, or an average of 4.3% per annum over some two-and-a-half years, plus a one-off $600 "bonus", and the staged extension of opening hours for customer service centres (CSCs) from eight to nine hours per day by February 2005.

The extension of hours issue for CSCs, which will not be accompanied by any additional funding for extra staff, was probably the most hotly debated question — with a sizeable majority of union members in NSW voting against the agreement as a consequence.

Many CPSU members were angry about Centrelink management stalling on the negotiation process, which means that the pay rise will only just match inflation rates over the period of the agreement, and not give due compensation for the substantial productivity gains made by Centrelink over recent years, with much more to come during the life of the new agreement.

The majority of union members around the country were reluctant to back the new agreement because they were not confident that the union could mount a strong enough industrial campaign to win major improvements. This was underlined by a foreshadowed proposal by the Section Council which would set in train, if the agreement was rejected by CPSU members, an immediate walkout and stopwork meetings to endorse a rapidly escalating campaign of rolling strikes.

Although a successful campaign of half-day stoppages was mounted last December when Centrelink attempted to impose a non-union agreement after CPSU members rejected the earlier draft, many union members were not sure that enough ground work had been done to successfully carry out the planned campaign of industrial action immediately.

The result of the meetings was majority endorsement of the agreement, except where there were strong enough feelings against the extension of hours proposal. If the agreement is now supported by an all-staff vote, the next stage of the struggle will be to enforce the provisions of the agreement which guarantee workers in Centrelink regional offices agreed regular hours and the right to take flex-days off.

The key to the future for CPSU members in CSCs is the defence of the principle of staffing to workload. If Centrelink and the federal government won't provide sufficient staff to properly implement the extended hours, then it can't be allowed to go ahead.

[Jim McIlroy is a delegate at a Centrelink call centre.]

From Green Left Weekly, April 23, 2003.
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