The Australian Federal Police Association (AFPA) has secured authorisation from the Fair Work Commission to hold a strike ballot of its members, as the law-enforcement union heads towards its first-ever use of protected industrial action in its stoush with the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) over whole-of-public-service bargaining.
The approval of the AFPA’s application for a protected action ballot comes as the union and its employer agency appear to have an increasingly cohesive position on heading to the workplace umpire to secure a decision on pay and conditions outside what the APSC had laid down via its determination that federal police effectively have to cop unless challenged in court.
The industrial action is essentially a public protest against the APSC’s service-wide bargaining stand that is seeking to level out and standardise fragmented public service pay scales and conditions after almost a decade of agency-by-agency bargaining.
While the APSC and Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) have been talking up the codification of flexible work as a formal workplace condition as a big breakthrough in this round of bargaining, it delivers little to on-site or in-the-field shift workers like cops.
Trades, technical and specialist unions like the AFPA as well as the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU), Construction, Forestry and Maritime Union (CFMEU), Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU), United Firefighters Union (UFU) and Professionals Australia are now letting it be known there’s not much in the deal for them.
Strikes hit Parliament House in Canberra on Friday after the AMWU rolled protected industrial action.
“AFP appointees don’t enjoy the benefits of flexible workplace arrangements readily available to other Commonwealth employees and public servants. Stopping child exploitation and counterterrorism can’t be done from your kitchen table and spare bedroom,” AFPA president Alex Caruana said.
In an important distinction, the AFPA is singling out the APSC as the obstacle rather than the AFP as the employer, with Caruana stressing the relationship with the AFP EA Bargaining Team remained strong, with open communication between parties.
“The AFP has been placed in a difficult position by the Federal Government’s Public Sector Workplace Relations Policy 2023 and the non-APS parameters,” Caruana said.
“We believe that the AFP wants to reward appointees but is hamstrung by the policy and locked into an 11.2% pay rise over three years, with no new allowances. We want to be proved wrong, but we don’t think the Government and APSC are willing to allow the AFP to improve their offer.”
Caruana said the bargaining policy was a “clear demonstration that the key personnel within the Government and the Australian Public Service Commission do not understand an operational policing environment or the risks AFP appointees face every single time on shift.”
The essential nature and sensitivity of the AFP’s work means that its officers cannot really withdraw their labour, meaning that industrial action will be either symbolic or administrative in nature, but there is still substantial scope within this realm.
With the AFP very visibly guarding politicians and VIPs as well as airports, the border and Canberra, there’s plenty of scope to get the message that not everyone drives a desk to people in high places.
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Federal Police Association readies strike force against dud APS pay deal
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