The hunt to find documents exposing how much trouble the Australian Taxation Office is having recruiting and retaining staff because of sub-market salaries has intensified, with a key union zeroing in on labour market assessments.
As the Australian Public Service bargaining process grinds on, a probe by the Taxation Officers’ Branch of the Australian Services Union over what the ATO’s management and human resources teams know about how far south their agency’s salary range is from the market is getting sufficiently forensic to appeal to fans of mystery dramas.
To recap the plot so far, the ASU earlier last week wrote to the ATO seeking documents related to the agency’s recruitment difficulties as part of bargaining negotiations, and warning it would go to the Fair Work Commission to seek orders unless they were produced.
Tax had a look, but alas, the smoking gun couldn’t be located.
What elephant?
“We acknowledge your concern that the ATO has not met, or is not meeting, its good faith bargaining obligations. The ATO is confident it has met its obligations under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act) but its strong preference is to resolve the ASU’s concerns in a sensible way without the need to resort to further proceedings in the Fair Work Commission,” Tax said in its reply.
“… the ASU has asked for copies of any written reports that have been provided to the ATO executive and/or each executive of each of the ATO Groups which disclose any difficulties the ATO is, or has been, experiencing recruiting and retaining employees at various senior levels in the period February 2022 to August 2023.
“The ASU is not aware of any actual reports that exist, but it strongly suspects there must be documents that match this description. The ATO also acknowledges the basis for the request is to show the reports to government and/or the media (we interpret your reference to “court of public opinion” as meaning the media) to pursue its claims regarding pay,” Tax cordially responded.
Policy-based evidence: don’t measure what you can’t manage
Normally, large organisations regularly benchmark their salaries against the market for several sound reasons: to set budgets and headcount; to predict how hard or easy it will be to attract staff; to estimate the likely rate of salary-related staff turnover (exits); to estimate the cost of labour-hire or contractor backfill when permanents can’t be found; and to project the amount of recruitment advertising spend needed to attract suitable candidates.
Tax’s last available annual report puts its staff recruitment advertising bill for the 2021-2022 financial year at $416,275, and it’s the single biggest line item in its $2.2 million ad spend.
The “staffing profile” in the same report put the number of ATO employees 20,375 at 30 June 2022. That number is down 906 employees from the previous financial year, while the proportion of staff classified as “mature age” cited as per Tax’s diversity statistics is 36.3%, suggesting an ageing, shrinking workforce.
Normally agency labour market benchmarking isn’t that hard to find, because agencies use these stats to convince politicians and the spendthrifts at the Department of Finance to loosen the purse strings a little, or to get real about how some short-term savings can generate a long-term cost.
They also get tossed around in senate estimates.
Mind you, if you are an employer negotiating with employees for a pay rise, those numbers may be a little too revealing of the hand you actually hold, despite your best poker face, hence the ASU’s increasing efforts to flush out numbers it can use in putting its argument for a pay rise together.
What gun?
Tax isn’t exactly thrilled by the prospect.
“Given the breadth of the requested information, it is still not clear to the ATO how the ASU claims the request is reasonable. The ATO also has some doubt that such documents, assuming one or more exists, would be required to be provided to the ASU under section 228 of the FW Act,” the ATO told the ASU.
“Notwithstanding these matters, to try and avoid potential disputation with the ASU, the ATO has been searching for documents that could possibly fall into the category described in your email, including through liaising with the Secretariat for the ATO Executive committee. To date, no such document has been identified that falls into the requested category. Our searches are continuing. It may be that if a document is identified, it will be provided to the ASU, but it will ultimately depend on the content of any document that is found.”
Now the ASU has responded, politely but firmly, that if Tax actually wants to get to spend some more of the hundreds of billions of dollars it collects each year on wages so they can keep staff, it might help a little to have some numbers to persuade ministers with when their in having a friendly chat.
“The ASU is entering into discussions with the Government with a view to persuade relevant Ministers that it needs to reconsider its Workplace Relations Policy in terms of the salaries it will permit the ATO to offer in bargaining for a new ATO Enterprise Agreement,” ASU Tax Officers’ Branch Secretary Jeff Lapidos wrote.
“The ASU sees it as being in the interests of the Government and the Tax Commissioner to have high levels of expertise right across the ATO. The ASU continues to receive reports from our members that the ATO is losing such expertise because many of its employees cannot afford to remain when much higher remuneration is offered elsewhere.”
What I meant was …
Then there’s the small issue of what might already be on the record.
“The ATO has already advised the ASU in bargaining that it is concerned its current salary structure for the EL2 classification level is not sufficiently competitive when compared with other APS Agencies. You advised us at bargaining that the ATO’s current EL2.1 pay range is around 43rd from the top in a ranking of APS Agencies,” Lapidos wrote.
“The ATO raised the possibility of eliminating the EL2 ‘Higher Work Value’ pay points, so they would be available to all EL2s, subject to annual salary advancement. You advised that if a change of this nature is made, ATO EL2 salaries would place around 9th from the top in a ranking of APS Agencies. A change of this nature would enable EL2s to obtain a 5.1% salary increase over two years, separate from any general salary increase from a new ATO Enterprise Agreement.
“You said the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) had advised the ATO that a change of this nature would be permitted under the Government’s Public Sector Workplace Relations Policy. The ASU also understand from all this that the ATO is concerned about its ability to recruit and retain EL2 staff with its current salary structure, even with the pay increases proposed by the APSC.”
The ASU has now told Tax to look a little harder and reckons the agency should be able to provide the information requested by “Monday, 23 October 2023 and we ask that you do so,” Lapidos wrote.
The union already has one application for bargaining orders before the Fair Work Commission to enforce good faith bargaining requirements over changes to ATO staff performance management rights.
“The ATO deliberately misled the ASU and other employee bargaining representatives by making several false statements. These denied the ASU’s view that the ATO’s proposals, enunciated first on 12 September 2023, to change clauses 90 and 91 of the ATO Enterprise Agreement 2017 remove three separate and important protections for employees from the current clause 91,” the ASU said in its application to the FWC in September.
Bargaining continues.
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