As bargaining over sector-wide common terms and conditions of employment (Common Conditions) in the Australian Public Service (APS) nears completion, we reflect on progress to date.
Many of the newly negotiated Common Conditions are noteworthy. However, we consider that the most significant change is an ideological shift that has influenced the form, content, and outcomes of bargaining.
A turn to public value
We find that the Australian government’s approach to APS bargaining represents an ideological shift. Since the 1980s, Western governments have embraced neoliberalism. New Public Management (NPM) aimed to make the public sector more like the private sector, with increased competition, efficiency, accountability, and adoption of private sector management techniques.
One aspect of this form of neoliberalism was setting terms and conditions of employment at the agency level, through enterprise bargaining. This was held to be more efficient than centralised bargaining. However, this resulted in pay dispersion and inequity, and fragmentation of the terms and conditions of employment across the APS.
Bargaining frameworks have been used since 1997 to underpin agency-level bargaining. These frameworks set limits around wage increases and, since 2014, severely limited improvements to terms and conditions of employment. Common Conditions are now being negotiated between the unions, employee bargaining representatives and the government to apply across the APS.
This is a fundamental change to APS bargaining. For the first time since the introduction of enterprise bargaining, the Common Conditions will be included in each agency’s enterprise agreement, along with some remaining agency-specific terms and conditions of employment.
This shift signals a repudiation of NPM values. It also signals a turn to public value, which is based on the realisation that market solutions may be incompatible with the goals of the public sector and the notion of serving the public. Public value exceeds creating economic value to focus on improving how society functions.
The current APS bargaining embodies public value, which is evident in three ways.
First, public value incorporates a commitment to progressing equity. The Common Conditions will increase fairness and equity, particularly through reducing pay fragmentation and improving gender equitable provisions. Second, public value also incorporates notions of sustainability. Increased pay and improved conditions of employment will attract and retain employees, making the APS workforce sustainable. Third, best practice processes are also a hallmark of public value, and this is evident through genuine bargaining being conducted.
Improved terms and conditions of employment
The public value approach has resulted in important new provisions, which include:
- expanding the formal right to request flexible working arrangements to all employees, underpinned by a bias towards granting the request;
- removing the cap on the amount of time employees can work from home, and
- increasing the quantum of paid parental leave to 18 weeks for each parent over the life of the agreement.
The quantum of the pay rise is yet to be determined as Community and Public Sector Union members and other employees consider the government’s latest 11.2% pay offer over three years. How pay fragmentation will be reduced is also still being negotiated.
Other important conditions have not been agreed to by the Australian Government in this bargaining round, such as gender affirmation leave, and disability leave. However, a continued public value approach to future negotiations is likely to further improve APS pay and conditions of employment.
This is an edited version of an article published in the Journal of Industrial Relations, available here.
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