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Government approach to agreement making in the Australian Public Service
The Hon. Peter Reith MP
Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service
Canberra
I met last night with the ACTU and key APS unions, including the CPSU and the AMWU, to outline the Government's new agreement making arrangements for the public service.
A key element of the Government's new approach is to abandon the service-wide emphasis which has prevailed to date and place greater emphasis on workplace relations at the level of individual agencies.
A single agreement covering over 130,000 employees in around 100 agencies and departments performing widely divergent roles does little justice either to public servants or to the particular needs of the agencies in which they work. This approach, pursued by the previous Labor Government, simply slow tracked change in personnel and other work practices and left public servants mired in procedures.
Individual agencies will be more accountable for improving their people management policies, their overall performance and, importantly, remuneration and other conditions of employment for public servants. This will enable human resource management strategies to be more closely aligned with the organizational goals of individual agencies and departments.
Recent consultations with public servants on the reform of the APS revealed a pressing need to streamline public service processes, such as leave arrangements, promotion and appointment procedures and provide greater scope for improved pay and better performance management.
To date, public servants have been saddled with a second-best system.
The Government seeks to make the APS an attractive and flexible work environment which links agency and individual performance with remuneration.
With these objectives in mind, the Government has adopted the following new approach to the bargaining arrangements to apply in the APS:
- a number of agencies with specialist needs and which are well placed and prepared to take responsibility for key aspects of their employment framework will make comprehensive agency-level certified agreements with unions or directly with employees
- a framework of basic principles will be developed, in consultation with the APS unions, to assist agency-level agreement-making in remaining agencies. This framework will provide a means to ensure that all employees can benefit from the reform approach and enable service wide issues to be addressed
- scope for sub-agency certified agreements where these may be appropriate (for example, where there are discrete units in an agency);and
- enable all agencies to offer, consistent with the Workplace Relations Act 1996, Australian Workplace Agreements to employees to the extent appropriate to an agency's needs.
A coordination role is planned for the Department of Industrial Relations to support agreement making across the APS consistent with Government policy parameters and, where applicable, the framework principles.
A priority for agency bargaining would be the overhaul of personnel and people management policies.
The Government has also reviewed the practice of the Commonwealth deducting union dues. Dues will only be collected with the written authority of members and provided the relevant union acts responsibly.
Further meetings with the unions will canvass the following matters:
- the framework of basic principles to apply to APS agency bargaining and the coordination arrangements and associated policy parameters applying to those agencies not seeking a comprehensive certified agreement;
- the application of award simplification to APS awards and their transition over time away from paid rates award arrangements, including protections to ensure pay is not reduced in the process;
- key aspects of a proposed new Public Service Act, including its coverage and how matters that will no longer be regulated through this Act are to be dealt with unions' concerns with competitive tendering and contracting (including accountability, service quality and access issues); and
- wider APS reforms, in areas such as Government Service Charters, aimed to strengthen agencies' accountability and service delivery in the more devolved operating environment ahead.
Many of these matters have been covered in the Joint Unions' 1997 Log of Claims served in the APS recently and in their submission responding to the Government's Discussion Paper.
Ultimately, the outcomes sought from improving workplace relations in the APS are similar to those sought in the wider community - namely, better pay for better work or (put another way) improved remuneration and working arrangements for APS staff, linked to achieved improvements in the productive performance of each agency.
At the same time, however, the Government recognizes there are a number of key differences between the public and private sectors and intends to address these in legislative changes to the Public Service Act and in elements of its approach to agency-level agreement making.
For further information, contact Nick Hordern: 06-277 7320 or 0419-423 756
