The Community and Public Sector Union has called for a return to centralised wage-fixing in the APS with a service-wide agreement on pay and conditions and a review of classifications and wages.
In its submission to Treasury on the 2010-11 Budget, the union calls for a “more unified and cohesive APS” and an end to “inequitable outcomes on pay.”
According to the CPSU, the current system which requires the APS to negotiate around 100 individual agency agreements is inefficient and unfair.
CPSU call for service-wide conditions
“The APS is a single employer,” the union says. “However it does not act as such.”
According to the union, individual agency bargaining wastes time, money and resources.
“Bargaining processes are duplicated in each Agency, diverting critical resources away from delivering on the Government’s policy and Budget priorities,” it says.
“Decentralised bargaining in the APS has led to inequitable outcomes on pay and corroded the work level standards that underpin the APS classification structure.”
The union says Government Agencies now compete against each other to recruit and retain skilled workers.
“Such competition is particularly insidious where there is a tight public sector jobs market,” it says.
The CPSU points out that the maximum pay rate at the APS5 level differs by $13,800 between the lowest and the top.
“A system that rewards employees of the same employer with significantly different payrates is neither fair for employees nor efficient.”
The union makes 13 recommendations in its submission – which include doing away with the efficiency dividend; funding Agencies adequately for the tasks they’re given; and clamping down on outside contracts – and calls for a joint union/Government review of the APS classification structure and wages.
“Disparities in remuneration and erosion of the classification system have a negative impact on the APS and its employees,” the union says.
“A review would allow for a thorough examination of pay differentials for work performed at the same APS levels.”
According to the CPSU, restoring a common classification system to the APS would assist mobility and help revive the one-APS culture.
“It is therefore essential that a review of wages and classifications be conducted,” it says.
The full CPSU submission can be accessed at www.cpsu.org.au
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