Federal Police Association readies strike force against dud APS pay deal

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The Australian Federal Police Association has set the ball rolling on nationwide industrial action, applying for a protected ballot for its members from the Fair Work Commission.

This represents an escalation in its campaign against the Australian Public Service Commission, which is effectively forcing it to cop the service-wide pay deal.

In a sign of the growing resentment against being legally railroaded into the broader public service pay deal of 11.2% over three years, AFPA president Alex Caruana said that “this course of action is the only way forward due to the restrictiveness of the government’s Public Sector Workplace Relations Policy 2023 and the non-APS bargaining parameters forming part of that policy”.

A major issue for the AFPA is that state police forces are poaching federal cops with more attractive pay deals and conditions while the AFP itself is constrained by sector-wide negotiation.

In the event there are strikes – and there haven’t been for several years – they are likely to take the form of targeted and often symbolic bans.

“We are stuck with a bargaining policy that won’t allow the AFPA to bargain with the AFP to provide pay rises that are competitive with private enterprise and other law enforcement agencies,” Caruana said.

The AFP has a number of high-profile policing roles, including providing personal protection for the nation’s leaders and visiting dignitaries and providing security at airports. It also plays a key role in confiscating the proceeds of crime that are then put into government coffers.

Strikes would also take the shine off the first service-wide bargaining deal in a generation now being more broadly voted up across APS agencies.

The big selling point to most APS agencies has been the addition of flexible work conditions into the agency enterprise agreements. This is being marketed as increasing the ability of public servants to work from home.

However, those conditions are usually not available to employees such as sworn officers and other frontline and uniform staff whose work locations are often on the ground, in the field or at secure facilities and who work to 24-7 rosters and can be sent all over Australia.

Those work requirements mean that the trade-off between higher wages and flexible working conditions is effectively much lower for staff at agencies like the Australian Federal Police.

The Taxation Officers’ Branch of the Australian Services Union has also taken issue with the way flexible work is being marketed in the bargaining process and is formally disputing some of the claims put to Australian Taxation Office staff by their employer as misleading or insufficient in detail.

At senate estimates this week, the APSC was grilled over how it had circulated inaccurate information to public servants purporting to improve flexible work conditions in the APS pay deal, only to be called out for promoting conditions that already existed, triggering a correction and apology.

Rancour over what the AFPA considers an inadequate pay offer has been brewing since bargaining started, with the AFPA sounding out its membership last year for a potential course of action.

“An overwhelming majority (75%) of respondents endorsed industrial action to advocate for a better pay offer,” the AFPS said, adding its survey polled 1,800 members.

“Our application has been lodged, and we’ll wait for the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to respond and the FWC to make their decision,” Caruana said, adding the AFPA had “a mandate from its members to safeguard their workplace conditions and seek the best enterprise agreement possible.”

“As the bargaining framework sits today, we can’t achieve this and would be lumped with an enterprise agreement unfit for an operational law enforcement agency. The recent survey showed that over 90% of the 1,800 participants would reject the proposed three-year, 11.2% (with no additional allowances) pay rise offered by the government.”

Caruana said the AFP had the “lowest base-paid police officers in the country”.

“These are the same police and Protective Service Officers protecting politicians, guarding critical infrastructure such as Parliament House and Pine Gap, and protecting Australian children from the dangers of child exploitation.”

An AFP spokesperson told The Mandarin that bargaining with employee representatives started on 26 September, 2023, and the agency “is still midway through the bargaining process and has yet to present an offer to its workforce.”

The spokesperson said the AFP would continue bargaining with its workforce “within the Australian Government Public Sector Workplace Relations Policy outlining what can and cannot be offered as part of enterprise agreements” and that the workplace relations policy “applies to all Commonwealth entities, including the Australian Federal Police.”

“The AFP continues to work constructively with the AFPA on avenues they are seeking, including through the Fair Work Commission and the requirements of the Fair Work Act, the AFP spokes person said, adding “that our two priorities remain during this process – that we keep the public and our members safe, and that we maintain support for our hard-working members who every day save lives and protect Australia’s interests.”