Public servants strike against cuts to pay and conditions

Around 800 public servants and supporters rallied over lunchtime in the centre of Canberra on 15 September, kicking off a half-day strike across multiple government departments. The rally and strike are part of a long running Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) campaign for new enterprise agreements to cover 160,000 Commonwealth public servants. Further industrial action will follow, including a series of rolling strikes by customs and immigration staff at major airports.

Many public servants have not had a pay rise in more than two years. The government wants to strip workers’ rights out of legally enforceable agreements, and freeze wages for three years unless existing conditions are traded away. More than a year after most agreements expired, fewer than 4 percent of public servants have signed up to new deals, with numerous proposed agreements defeated in staff ballots.

Recently, 83 percent of staff at the Department of Human Services, which has a workforce of nearly 35,000 and is a union stronghold, rejected an offer of pay rises of 1.5 percent a year in exchange for substantial reductions in conditions.

Unfortunately, support for the campaign has remained largely passive at the workplace level. Numbers at the Canberra rally were well down on the 2,000 that attended a mass meeting in July, the only previous occassion when strike action was co-ordinated across multiple departments.

This is partly due to the union devoting time and resources to a “vote Labor” campaign in marginal electorates, despite resources already being stretched by the decentralised bargaining processes. More fundamentally, the union has consistently failed to prepare the membership for widespread and sustained strike action.

Addressing the rally, CPSU secretary Nadine Flood spoke of the need for workers to take action “when directed” to do so by the union. But there was no indication of what such action would look like for workers in most departments, or when it might take place. Flood also signalled her willingness to reach a compromise with incoming prime minister Malcom Turnbull.

The longest and loudest cheers at the rally were reserved for a cleaner who works at Parliament House, and who is part of an industrial campaign against pay cuts. If cleaning staff, who work for minimum pay rates, can defy the government and take serious strike action, she asked, then why can’t public servants? This is the sort of fighting spirit we need to defend our pay and conditions.