6.1 Agreements and determinations

In recent years, each APS agency has been responsible for establishing and maintaining its own workplace relations arrangements governing wages and conditions, within the broader legislative and policy framework. Workplace arrangements in APS agencies have included enterprise agreements, common law agreements and determinations made under the Public Service Act 1999.

Between November 2021 and May 2022, employees in three APS agencies voted up new enterprise agreements. Another 34 APS agencies received APSC approval to make determinations under section 24(1) of the Public Service Act 1999. Thirty-two of these determinations supplement nominally expired enterprise agreements by providing pay increases for APS employees. Two provided comprehensive entitlements for employees (Figure 6.1).

Before September 2022, the Public Sector Workplace Relations Policy 2020 established the policy settings for workplace relations in the Commonwealth public sector. For instruments made under this policy, pay increases were linked to the annual percentage change in the seasonally adjusted private sector Wage Price Index for the preceding June quarter. This figure became the cap for the maximum wage increase available for Commonwealth employees. Agencies were able to negotiate a lower value based on affordability.

From 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2022, the cap was 1.9% based on the year to June quarter 2021 change in private sector Wage Price Index, published by the ABS on 18 August 2021. This replaced the 1.7% cap based on the previous year’s Wage Price Index results.

Figure 6.1: Workforce relations summary statistics (November 2021 to September 2022)

Source: APSC