Community and Public Sector Union

Public servants and Parliament House staff have signed an open letter urging the Morrison government to increase their workplace safety and install a sufficient complaints process, following multiple sexual assault allegations and increasing calls for the government to act.

The safety at work survey of 98 members of parliament employees was released less than two weeks after Brittany Higgins alleged she had been sexually assaulted at Parliament House in 2019.

The wage deal could see commonwealth political staffers, the majority of whom are women, take a pay cut.

There has, as always, been much criticism regarding the communities, industries and issues that have missed out.

Morrison says it’s a matter he’ll continue to pursue with the state premiers and chief ministers, whom he knows will also be wanting to be seeing their own CBDs revitalised,.

The CPSU on Tuesday said the decision was due to a $3.6 million funding shortfall, and flagged the possibility of further cuts following a three-week voluntary redundancy process.

The union representing Australian Public Service employees has won paid leave for more than 8000 casual workers if they are affected by the coronavirus, and has called for the measures to be extended to all non-permanent staff.

Federal departments have been putting plans in place to help staff and the public as the coronavirus pandemic worsens, while the union representing the Australian Public Service has reminded employers to support staff in non-permanent roles.

Labor and the public sector union have criticised the government’s refusal to lift the public sector staff cap and adopt common pay and conditions for public servants, as recommended in the recently released Thodey report.

In a recent submission to the ACT 2020-21 budget, the Community and Public Sector Union called for the government to reduce insecure work arrangements in the public service, noting that 24% of all ACT public sector workers were employed on a non-ongoing basis. In health and education, this amounts to thousands of employees without the security of a full-time job and everything that goes with it.

The Community and Public Sector Union’s governing council has appointed industrial lawyer Melissa Donnelly as its acting national secretary until elections for all of the union’s elected offices are held at the end of 2020. Her appointment follows the resignation of Nadine Flood for health reasons, which was announced in mid-August. The union informs us […]

CSIRO staff have voiced their concerns over the federal government’s public service staffing cap, arguing that it could harm the organisation in the long term. The coalition’s Average Staffing Level Cap was introduced in the 2015-16 federal budget as an effort to restrict government employment numbers to 2006-07 levels. 

Victoria’s DHHS held an all-staff forum last week to update employees on the ongoing changes occurring as part of the NDIS. Employees already working in the disability sector will be transferred to other agencies and non-government providers, not federal agencies.

Federal public service leaders want the official FOI guidelines changed to support their standard practice of shielding the names and contact details of staff below senior executive level wherever possible, with many agencies citing harrowing tales of harassment and abuse staff members have suffered after their identities were released in FOI documents.