“Where the Catholics had Mother Mary as their guiding light, there will now be me, Rachel, Our Mother of Perpetual Misery.” This is how ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith was depicted in a satirical piece criticising the ACT Labor government’s acquisition of Calvary Public Hospital, which has been run by the Catholic organisation Little Company of Mary since it opened in 1979. 
The acquisition follows a government-led inquiry into abortion and reproductive choice in the ACT, commissioned in July last year. The inquiry’s report, published in April, includes harrowing testimony of a woman who suffered painfully during a miscarriage. She was severely cramping but was advised upon admission to Calvary’s emergency department that the procedure she needed would not be performed because it was used for abortions. She instead had to pay $1,000 for the procedure at a private hospital. Calvary also refused to offer elective reproductive surgeries, including contraception and tubal ligation. 
In 2021-22, the ACT government paid Little Company of Mary $261 million to run Calvary Public Hospital and Clare Holland House, a palliative care unit. 
As a public hospital, Calvary was the default location for emergency treatment for Canberra’s northside. Two women lamented to Canberra Weekly that if they “get sick...the ambulance takes us to Calvary. We want health to be decided by health practitioners, not religious people.” 
The government's acquisition of Calvary is a step forward for public health and abortion rights in the ACT. But the decision comes after years of Labor refusing to confront the Little Company of Mary. In 2010, former Chief Minister Katy Gallagher said that the ACT government would not compulsorily acquire Calvary because it “would cause a lot of conflict”. 
The difference between then and now is the widespread public discussion around abortion sparked by the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. It is no longer tenable for the ACT government to fund a hospital that refuses to terminate pregnancies. 
Last year, 2,000 people protested for abortion rights in Canberra. Shortly afterwards, ACT Labor announced abortions would be free. A surgical abortion used to cost at least $650 in Canberra, now it costs nothing. Medical abortions cost only $30 due to subsidies through the pharmaceutical benefits scheme. 
While abortions are now free in the ACT, access remains an issue. Because of a lack of specialists, Canberrans can only access medical abortions up to nine weeks and surgical abortions up to sixteen weeks. 
The political and religious right have turned the acquisition of Calvary into their cause célèbre to push for a religious discrimination act. Peter Dutton claimed the takeover was an “attack on religion”. Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn Christopher Prowse said the takeover was an act of religious discrimination. 
The ACT Liberals ran a scare campaign in the lead-up to the takeover on 3 July, claiming the health system would see a mass exodus of workers. However, 95 percent of the hospital’s 1,800 staff will remain. Despite the Liberals’ cynical arguments, the sector is indeed under strain. Labor, in power since 2001, has systematically underfunded and understaffed Canberra’s healthcare system. Consequently, the ACT has the country's longest emergency department wait times. 
Free abortions and the acquisition of Calvary are two important steps forward against the bigoted practices of the religious right. But much more needs to be done to improve the quality of healthcare in the ACT.

CPSU member

ACT government’s acquisition of Calvary Public Hospital is a win for abortion rights

While the Albanese federal Labor government <a href="https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/jim-chalmers-2022/media-releases/stronger-wages-growth-under-labor">says</a> that “securing real wages growth remains a priority”, its actions as an employer suggest otherwise. In enterprise bargaining for the Australian Public Service, it has offered a paltry pay “rise” of 10.5 percent over three years—a significant wage cut in real terms. 
The 4 percent increase proposed for the first year falls well short of inflation, which was 6.8 percent over the past twelve months according to the <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/monthly-cpi-indicator-68-year-april">latest data</a> from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The problem is not only that the government aims to cut public servants’ real wages. It is using its power as a large employer to contain wages growth more broadly, and thus ensure that workers pay for the cost of inflation. That 86 percent of the 15,000 members who responded to the union’s survey <a href="https://www.cpsu.org.au/CPSU/Content/Media_releases/CPSU_Members_reject_first_pay_offer.aspx">opposed the offer</a> is an encouraging sign, prompting its rejection last week. 
The union is <a href="https://www.cpsu.org.au/CPSU/Content/Campaigns/commonwealth_bargaining_2021.aspx">asking</a> for a wage increase of 20 percent over three years: 9 percent in year one, 6 percent in year two and 5 percent in year three of a new agreement. The claim includes a cost-of-living adjustment for any year in which inflation exceeds the wage increase. CPSU National Secretary Melissa Donnelly <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8123042/fixing-the-aps-means-giving-public-servants-a-real-pay-rise/">argues</a> that, after a decade of wages being held back by Liberal governments, we need “a real pay rise” to catch up. 
Although the claim is not as ambitious as Donnelly implies—it would keep us ahead of current inflation but wouldn’t make up for past wage losses—achieving it would be a step forward. The union is also seeking pay equity: some public service employees are currently paid up to <a href="https://www.cpsu.org.au/CPSU/Content/Media_releases/APS_bargaining_to_prioritise_pay_equity.aspx">38 percent less</a> than their coworkers. 
The government has responded to union demands with proposed minimum salaries for each classification level, but the floors are dismally low. Although the worst-paid employees in a small number of agencies would benefit—notably, those with high proportions of Indigenous staff—the overall effect would be minimal. 
ABC Canberra data analyst Markus Mannheim <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-02/which-public-servants-will-receive-a-pay-boost/102420798">has shown</a> that salaries are already above the proposed floors at most agencies, and only 2 percent of public service employees would get a pay rise under the government’s proposed deal. The average salary gap would decrease, but it would still be 18 percent.
To win our claim, we’ll need to fight. However, there is little indication that the CPSU leaders want one. So far, they have called on union members only to display support for the claim—for example, by wearing red on 7 June. The union has lodged an application with the Fair Work Commission for a protected action ballot, but only at Services Australia, not at any other agency. CPSU leaders have not begun making the case to members that we will need to take industrial action to win. In fact, they didn’t even argue against the government’s offer. They merely <a href="https://www.cpsu.org.au/CPSU/Content/News/Government_pay_offer_is_in.aspx">asked</a> members to “tell us whether [it] is good enough”. 
It seems the CPSU leaders can’t bring themselves to criticise the Labor Party, which the union is affiliated to, and which is now running the government that employs us. 
For years, union leaders said that there’s nothing we can do to improve our pay and conditions under a Liberal government, that all we can do is campaign to elect Labor. Union membership declined and delegate structures atrophied, while CPSU officials campaigned for the election of Senator Katy Gallagher, who now leads our employer’s side of the enterprise bargaining negotiations as minister for the public service. 
The government’s miserly pay offer indicates, however, that Labor is no friendlier to public servants than the Liberals were. To make any advances, we’ll have to rebuild the union’s strength and be prepared to back up our claim with industrial action.

CPSU members reject below-inflation pay offer

Union members at the Bureau of Meteorology took strike action on 19 April as part of an enterprise agreement dispute that started in 2014. Over the course of bargaining, BoM staff have been offered some of the worst deals on pay and conditions in the Australian public service. 
With a workforce of around 1,700, the bureau is a medium size public service agency. Staff are highly specialised. Union density is solid, between 30 and 40 percent across the service, but higher still in front line operational areas. The Community and Public Sector Union has the most members, with Professionals Australia and the Electrical Trades Union also active. 
BoM weather forecasters number around 200 and work on a 24-hour roster to produce forecasts for industry and the public. Hundreds of other staff work in particular scientific fields such as hydrology, climate monitoring, research and development. Forecasters, observers and scientists are complemented by a workforce of around 500 IT and engineering technical workers. 
One of the things that has set BoM apart from other public sector agencies is management’s focus on cutting allowances paid to remote and travelling staff – often a significant component of take-home pay – and an aggressive “streamlining” of workplace conditions. BoM management is pushing harder than most other agencies. Nearly four years after the last agreement expired, CPSU members at the bureau will soon vote in a second protected action ballot to add a new set of work bans to those already being implemented. 
Restrictive bargaining policy
Like all federal public servants, bureau staff are bargaining in the context of the highly restrictive bargaining policy imposed in 2014 by the Australian Public Service Commission. The current version of the policy restricts pay rises to 2 percent per year and prohibits any form of back pay without the approval of the relevant minister. It also requires that all pay increases be offset by “productivity improvements”. Yet the fact that forecast accuracy has been steadily improving with scientific advances, or that the bureau’s forecast offerings have expanded in the last 10 years, doesn’t count under the Catch-22 flavoured accounting rules used by the APSC. 
The open agenda is for agencies to fund low-ball pay offers by cutting staff numbers and increasing work intensity for those remaining. Coupled with regular hiring freezes, this policy perversely encourages the use of agency contract labour.
Initially, the CPSU focused its campaign on the bargaining policy itself. While BoM workers had been bargaining since 2014, by 2015, the whole public service was in dispute. The union coordinated industrial action between multiple agencies to pressure the government to retract the policy. However, the momentum for coordinated action quickly petered out. The pace of bargaining was varied, with some agencies ready to talk while others stalled for years. Aside from the notable exception of the Department of Border Protection and Immigration – where industrial action was lengthy and disruptive until Fair Work shut it down – the union’s campaign lacked a genuine industrial element. 
Bureau offer backfires
At the bureau, progress was slow. Meetings took place, and eventually in 2016 the bureau’s shocking first offer was unveiled – a below inflation pay rise of 4.5 percent over three years, to be funded by attacking particular sections of the workforce. Shift-working forecasters were offered reduced leave loading. Staff in remote areas faced losing the allowances offered as compensation for living in areas with reduced services. Technical staff who spend much of their time on the road would have their travelling allowances replaced with a less generous payment system.
One senior manager explicitly outlined the rationale behind the offer: “We think that people will vote in their own self-interest”. Along with the deal on the table, management rolled out a campaign to paint shift workers as “having it too good for too long”. 
The offer was a mistake from management. To start with, it hit the areas with the highest union density the hardest. It also underestimated the degree of solidarity between the different groups of bureau staff. These crude attempts to divide the workforce were ineffective, and the offer was rejected, nearly 70 percent voting no and following up quickly with a 24-hour strike. 
A second offer was made in February 2017 – similar to the previous one but with a slightly higher pay offer. This too was rejected. 
Until this point, industrial action had been limited to the largely symbolic: a handful of half-day strikes, a few periods when phones or emails went unanswered and the inclusion of statements in email footers. One action that did worry management was the prospect of staff reading a prepared statement about the dispute during live radio crosses. This has led to most radio crosses now being handled by management. 
Industrial response
As 2017 progressed, union members were getting impatient. In Adelaide, a militant delegate started a petition demanding that the union organise real work bans, including bans on travel, maintaining particular observation equipment and even bans on repairing the rain radars. While this strategy wasn’t supported by the union, the demands led to a rethink of the industrial campaign. It was agreed that union members would implement ongoing work bans and irregular rolling stoppages, targeted to cause maximum disruption. 
In July 2017, the irregular stoppages started. They proved to be effective in the forecasting centres, which operate on a 24-hour roster. The stoppages threw rosters into chaos and interfered with the production of routine weather products. Middle-level managers were swamped with extra work.
Unfortunately, the rolling stoppages were not effective at interrupting the flow of forecasts to the public. Management decided that all forecasts would be published, regardless of whether they had received enough attention from forecasters. Even if the quality of the forecast was affected, the public was not to see a break in service. 
However, the mounting industrial pressure did cause management to start to shift. Late in 2017, concessions were announced, including dropping the cuts to shift penalties and reinstating terms cut from the agreement. Remote allowances were grandfathered. But there was still no offer of back pay after nearly four years without a pay increase.
While most other agencies finalised agreements during 2017, a December vote at the bureau rejected the deal. The result was a surprise to most. It was clear that staff didn’t think management’s concessions went far enough. As well, BoM still took a hard line on consultation rights and rights for union delegates.
Where to now? 
It is evident that the action so far has been below the threshold required to move significantly the position of the agency or government. Union militants are currently working on a strategy to expand the range of authorised work bans. The aim is to allow a broader spread of workers to take part, including technical staff, who have so far been unable to participate effectively. A ballot to consider new, more disruptive, actions is on the cards. 
The battle at the bureau is just a small fight against a much wider attack on public service workers. John Lloyd, public service commissioner, has unapologetically pursued an ideological agenda of winding back conditions, capping pay increases and reducing job security.

Behind the battle at the bureau: weather workers’ long fight

Thousands of federal public servants escalated their enterprise bargaining dispute in a series of half-day strikes between 18 and 26 June. Up to 2,000 attended a stop-work meeting in Melbourne, 1,500 in Canberra and several hundred in Sydney.
Worryingly, the Community and Public Sector Union leadership made no commitment to further cross-agency strikes. A motion passed at the mass meetings committed only to “strategic” industrial action “as required”.
The next step in our campaign is handing out information flyers to the public when they interact with government services. Unfortunately, only a minority of workers are in public roles. And this government has shown that it’s not afraid of negative public opinion unless it’s backed up by action.
This is why strikes are our best tool. Without customs, agriculture and environment workers, imports and exports would stall, new mines and projects would be unable to start. The government wants Australian capitalism running smoothly. Strikes across the public sector can disrupt this in a way that passive community support for our demands cannot.
The union pitched these strikes as the biggest commonwealth public service action in a generation. This is impressive, but with most members having little industrial experience, also set up an important challenge for the union: to convince members of the importance of striking. The CPSU made little effort to do this, instead describing the strikes as a reluctant “last resort”, with participation encouraged but optional. 
Since our agreements expired, our campaign has won some concessions. We will retain current superannuation payments, and wage offers are now closer to 1.5 percent a year, with fewer losses to conditions, than the initial 1 percent offer.
On the other hand, 160,000 public servants have each lost hundreds or thousands of dollars in real wages, as inflation eats into salaries that have not increased in nearly two years. And while a total of 17,000 jobs have been lost since September 2013, enterprise agreement offers put to most departments include longer working hours and reduced leave for those remaining.
Longer and bigger strikes across the public service are needed to protect our pay and conditions. The CPSU should commit to further cross-agency strikes to build on existing momentum. It also needs to do the necessary organising work to ensure strike participation increases.

What next for federal public sector dispute?

Federal public sector workers have started striking as part of enterprise agreement bargaining. On 20 May, union members from the Environment Department, Geoscience Australia and the Australian Institute of Criminology held a one-hour stoppage to join members from the National Library, Archives and other nearby agencies on flex-leave at a meeting of around 200 people. 
A motion moved by the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) condemned the government’s bargaining policy, which requires agencies to cut pay and conditions. It committed to public sector-wide stoppages in July and workers handing out flyers to clients detailing the government’s attacks. Beth Vincent-Pietsch, deputy secretary of the CPSU, pointed out that the Abbott government’s pay offers of less than 1 percent, on average, are well below wage increases being won in the private sector.
The action was one of a series of short stoppages staggered across a number of agencies over a two-week period, including at the ATO, Department of Human Services, Agriculture, Bureau of Meteorology, Employment, and Veterans’ Affairs. It was reported that management at the Bureau of Meteorology resorted to directing commercial radio stations to keep BOM staff off the air during planned protest days because of concerns that workers would read out statements about their industrial action while delivering weather updates. 
One-hour rolling strikes are a slow start to an industrial campaign that the union has been talking about for months. It is almost a year since most public servants’ enterprise agreements expired.
The appalling offers being put to staff are the logical and predictable outcome of the government’s bargaining policy, which has been public since March 2014. The shift to cross-agency stop-work meetings in June is positive, but a long way off the sustained cross-agency strikes that will be needed to protect public servants’ real wages and conditions.

Rolling strikes start in public sector

An unprecedented attack on pay and conditions has provoked a fight from federal public sector workers. In one of the largest protected action ballots ever conducted, workers at the Department of Human Services (DHS) have overwhelmingly endorsed industrial action as part of enterprise agreement negotiations. A cross-agency rally in Canberra on 6 November was attended by 2,000, with union members in other locations wearing red to work in solidarity. 
The moves are a response to the government’s public service bargaining policy, which was first made public in March. The policy mandates cuts to conditions and no pay rise as a starting point in negotiations at each federal public sector department or agency. Any offer on wages must specifically be tied to additional loss of conditions.
At the DHS, workers have been offered a 0.76 percent annual wage rise with major cuts to entitlements. Around 12,000 participated in the protected action ballot, which was carried with a 95 percent majority. The ballot now legally authorises a number of actions, including work stoppages of up to 24 hours. Given the result, it seems likely that union members would have voted for longer actions too, if given the choice. Union membership in the department has risen sharply during the campaign – to around 50 percent.
With workers in all agencies looking at similar offers, other departments are expected to follow suit. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs is currently voting, and others ballots are likely early next year.
Management at the Department of Employment, for example, have made two offers. Both would remove the current 15.4 percent superannuation guarantee while gutting consultation, union rights and other clauses in the name of “streamlining”.
One of the proposed options would slow pay progression, scrap the Christmas Eve half-day close down, delay eligibility for higher duties pay and cut a “healthy lifestyle” allowance – for a pay increase of 0.5-0.6 percent a year. The other option makes all the same cuts but would also add 30 minutes to the work week and reduce staff numbers by 46 – for a wage increase of about 0.9 percent a year.
The rally and protected action ballots are crucial first steps in building a campaign to defend public service pay and conditions. The 2,000 who turned out to protest got a glimpse of our collective power. CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood, the sole speaker at the rally, directly addressed the need for industrial action, albeit with the qualifier that any action would be “strategic” rather than “disruptive”.
It has been clear since March, when the bargaining policy was released, that serious strike action would be needed to get any decent offers on the table. The progress of bargaining has confirmed this. A 1.5 percent wage offer to defence personnel shows that the government is not afraid to make unpopular decisions in the cause of undermining public sector pay. Token actions from our side will not be enough to turn this around.
Ultimately, for all its bravado, the government still needs us. It would quickly rethink its bargaining policy if public servants stopped collecting taxes, prevented imports and exports or stopped assessing new mining applications.
As we build on the momentum of the rally and industrial action ballots, we need to be clear that there is one thing that can protect our pay and conditions – sustained strikes in multiple departments.

Canberra

Public sector workers vote to strike

You’re reminded that history repeats itself when hearing Omar Mehri speak about his brother’s case. In 2005, Omar’s brother, Abdullah Mehri, was one of a group of 12 Muslim men (known as “the Barwon 12”) who were prosecuted for thought crimes.
Omar recently spoke as part of a panel discussion with Kath Larkin, Rail, Tram and Bus Union delegate, at Socialist Alternative’s union conference. At a time of escalating racism towards Muslim Australians, the special session was organised to discuss the responsibility that union militants have to take up the issue.
An organiser in the Electrical Trades Union, Omar is uniquely placed to discuss the topic, having personally witnessed the devastating effects of institutionalised racism towards Muslims. His describes his brother as being “broken” by nearly five years in a high security prison.
Of the 12, Abdullah was one of seven found guilty of belonging to a terrorist organisation. Omar points out that the so-called organisation had “no name, no structure” and was in fact only the men themselves. The evidence offered for the charge was the contents of a few conversations between the young men and their spiritual adviser. 
The Barwon 12 were arrested in theatrical midnight raids that were a precursor to the larger raids carried out at the homes of Muslim families recently. Omar recalled the scene when he got to Abdullah’s home on 8 November 2005: “There was a helicopter … and that many cars … it was just like a movie.”
Then, as now, the raids triggered a wave of racist attacks. “It gave a licence to those people who were racists … to spit on sisters wearing the veil. It was bad then”, he says. “Today it is worse.”
The similarities don’t end there. Both sets of raids coincided with the government of the day contending with rising opposition to unpopular new laws. “We had WorkChoices back then, and that’s when they did the raid on my brother and others”, Omar argues. “Now we’ve got the budget and that’s backfired in Tony Abbott’s face big time.” He says the government is using Islamophobia and national security fear-mongering as “camouflage to cover [its] dirty work behind the scenes”.
Both Omar and Kath Larkin highlighted the importance of speaking out and publicly opposing racism. Crucially, workers should be able to take a stand through their unions. “They have the numbers”, Omar says, along with a duty to improve human rights, not just workplace rights.

ACT government’s acquisition of Calvary Public Hospital is a win for abortion rights

CPSU members reject below-inflation pay offer

Behind the battle at the bureau: weather workers’ long fight

What next for federal public sector dispute?

Rolling strikes start in public sector

Public sector workers vote to strike

Fighting Islamophobia is a union duty

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