Public servants will be offered an uncapped flexible work entitlement as a base condition under the current round of industrial bargaining, in a major concession from the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) to take the heat out pay negotiations.
An official bargaining update issued by the APSC on Monday morning reveals the government’s industrial agent has offered to park the thorny issue of mandated caps on the number of days public servants can work remotely, in a move that cuts both ways for agencies and their staff.
The APSC update said the government’s chief negotiator, Peter Riordan, has put forth a proposal that contains “extensions to existing entitlements to allow flexible work requests for any reason”, in a notable post-COVID shift that largely extinguishes managerialist cultural suspicions about the modern work mode.
“The proposed entitlement won’t include a cap on the number of days employees can request to work from home. Instead, agencies will be required to consider what arrangements are appropriate in their agency, taking into account that agencies and their employees know their operating environment and job types the best,” the APSC Bargaining Update said.
The imposition of limits on working remotely is known to be favoured in parts of some parts of the Senior Executive Service to maintain a degree of face-to-face interpersonal skills, workplace discipline and the ability to get to know others in an agency.
Those views, particularly prevalent in larger agencies, now appear to have been sidelined for the new reality.
“You have told us a common approach to flexible work is one of the most important items to APS employees. Following productive discussions, we are confident we can reach a positive outcome for both APS agencies and employees on this matter,” the APSC update said.
However, the APSC has left the final call on flexible working in the hands of individual agency chiefs, a bit of a departure from the notion of whole-of-APS bargaining, but probably a necessary one given several security and frontline agencies have highly proscriptive requirements of their employees and officers, including when and where they work.
The big agencies and departments that will be most watched, and that have heavy industrial representation, include Centrelink, Tax, Home Affairs and Defence, the latter two being the subject of fairly obvious security considerations.
One of the reasons security agencies like their staff in the office is that their premises can be secured against bugs and snoops by design and through regular technical surveillance countermeasures (TSCM) sweeps.
The APSC proposal to go uncapped on flex also has implications for the Community and Public Sector Union’s position, which put in a bold bid for a 20% pay rise. It is likely the government will position the elimination of any notion of a cap as a concession that should be reciprocated by the union.
Negotiating tactics aside, there is a fair degree of self-interest in going flex-by-default for the APSC because it will allow agency chiefs to cast a much wider geographical net for talent than five years ago.
One element that has recently given the CPSU a boost to its negotiating power is that the public sector now has to compete much harder against other employers to secure and retain talent, a good reason to up conditions and pay rather than stalling them or pushing down, like the previous government.
That said, there’s little doubt that a large part of the intention behind the APSC declaring an uncapped, flex-by-default position is a major bid to widen the candidate pool away from Canberra, which remains one of the least-affordable cities to live thanks to high house prices and rents and coupled with other high prices like groceries, take away food and petrol.
Opening new and existing roles to flex is likely to inject new talent and perspectives into the candidate pool, but it could also act as a heat sink for remuneration and contingent labour prices, especially if role classifications were being artificially upgraded to make pay meet the market.
One area the APS has conspicuously struggled in is finding permanent IT staff, partly because its classification system that determines pay is as much as $100,000 a year behind what the private sector pays, making the APS and programs heavily reliant on contractors and outsourcers.
The APSC has also explicitly rejected creating a new technologist classification for public servants, despite a specific recommendation in the Thodey review.
Meanwhile, agencies are being advised how exemptions to flex must be applied.
The APSC says that “if an agency is unable to accommodate a flexible work request … there will be a clear process outlined for agencies to follow, and a requirement to genuinely try to find alternative arrangements to accommodate the employee’s circumstances.”
“Further discussions on flexible working arrangements will occur in future meetings, particularly around what a common term for inclusion in an enterprise agreement might look like.”
The CPSU said last week flex would be at the pointy end of negotiations.
“It is no secret that the APS is facing an attraction and retention crisis, and that current APS employees are bearing the brunt of that, with burnout, turnover and workloads all sitting higher than they should be. But fully embracing flexible work and opening the doors of APS employment to new parts of the population could be a game-changer,” CPSU National Secretary Melissa Donnelly said.
“Creating an APS workforce that is more reflective of the public it is there to serve has the potential to be transformative for the services it delivers. The APS has everything to gain and nothing to lose in negotiations on flexible work and working from home.”
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