On 13 October, the federal Labor government handed down its three-year offer to Australian Public Service (APS) workers. As inflation rises to 4.3 per cent, it’s a pay cut again—3.2 per cent, 3 per cent and 2.8 per cent.
The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has a modest APS-wide claim for a pay rise matching cost of living or 5 per cent per year (whichever is greater). We can’t accept anything less.
There are reports of lower paid public servants (APS4) using food banks.
Ross Gittins wrote in the Nine newspapers, “By March 2023, the purchasing power of everyone’s wage was cut by 5 per cent, and nothing’s been done to reduce that cut to people’s ‘real’ wage.”
The Albanese government secured a below-inflation outcome last bargaining round. And Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher had already told The Mandarin, “5 per cent a year would be ‘impossible’.”
With its massive cuts to the NDIS, Labor has made it clear that public services are dispensable, launching a war on its own workforce in a bid to save the Budget bottom line.
Rising military spending is, of course, exempt. Public sector unionists are right to say, welfare not warfare.
In a sign of workers’ anger, a snap online CPSU poll saw nearly 90 per cent of members reject the government’s pay offer.
Meanwhile, the tax branch of the Australian Services Union has polled its members in the ATO, with 95 per cent also rejecting the offer.
Prepare for action
The gloves are off and the union must match the attack with a serious strategy to push back. We should be preparing for industrial action when the current enterprise agreements expire around February/March 2027.
Years of agency-based bargaining have left disparate wages and conditions structures across the APS, which the union is now attempting to unify with service-wide bargaining.
The APS Commission argues that, in the name of standardising conditions, the lowest common denominator should rule and is now targeting hard-won conditions, which will impose more intense workloads. Workers in Services Australia face the loss of three days of annual leave.
Rank-and-file unionists must prepare to defend every condition and raise the conditions up to the best, as well as to fight for a decent pay rise. While industrial action at this stage is wrongfully illegal under the Fair Work Act, discussing and preparing for action is not.
The union has launched a campaign on social media but is not bringing union members together in mass, in-person meetings. Instead, fragmented groups of workers will have meetings online. As well, the union prevents debate during online meetings; with the chat turned off.
Vote Members United
Triennial CPSU elections are also happening.
No wonder dozens of union activists are organising to change the union, to return democratic structures and build a member-led union that fights for members’ interests.
Members United (MU) is the ticket backed by the caucus Democracy4CPSU. Its platform supports a real pay rise greater than inflation and an improvement in working conditions, as well as a union structure that supports mass meetings, including the right for members to move motions.
Sonia Williams, a delegate at Geosciences Australia (GA), is one of six MU candidates for the union’s executive committee.
She is part of an active delegates committee and recognises that mass meetings and industrial action by public sector workers would send a powerful message, stating, “Our union is strongest when rank-and-file members are informed, confident and empowered to lead.
“With an active team of delegates, during a recent restructure, we pushed back and saved jobs which were regarded as excess. Collective action delivers results.”
The election is an opportunity to send a message that we need stronger union leadership.
However, we must start to prepare to fight, rather than wait for a better team of officials.
Members should consider any offer collectively, in mass in-person meetings, not in small groups, nor as individuals via surveys. Without industrial action, we have no leverage against an employer intent on making public servants pay for service cuts.
Call meetings at work or after work – start the conversation now, before the government’s intransigence deepens.
GA delegates recently endorsed a motion that supports collective action to win the CPSU claim in full, and openly consider any government offer through active mass meetings, both in-person and online. They support common conditions being raised to the highest standard.
“Without public servants, there is no service, and our livelihoods must not be sacrificed for its functioning,” Sonia says.
Other delegates are following the GA delegates’ lead. At Australian Energy Regulator, delegates endorsed the motion as well as additional demands for the union to prepare now for industrial action that will be needed once the current agreements expire.
For copies of the model motions, email jmcvey@me.com.
By Solidarity members in the CPSU
