Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If ever a cure was needed for insomnia, Senator Urquhart is it, as is testified by the people sleeping in the gallery after her impassioned attack on the budget. I rise today to speak about Public Service wage bargaining, specifically the stance of the Australian Services Union and its tax branch secretary, Mr Jeff Lapidos. Mr Lapidos has recently gained notoriety for his trenchant opposition to tax office employees working an extra nine minutes a day in return for a pay rise. An extra nine minutes a day would take the average working week at the ATO to 37½ hours per week—hardly an imposition. I note it would only bring ATO employees into line with 72 per cent of APS employees covered by 74 other enterprise bargaining agreements which stipulate a 37½ hour working week. Once again, this is hardly an imposition. I also point out that the general community standard, as per the National Employment Standards, is for 38 hours per week of work. But more troubling was Mr Lapidos's threats that:

Any industrial action will be designed to hurt the commissioner and the government as much as we can.

Even the Canberra Times was moved to editorialise as follows:

A proposal that public servants work an extra nine minutes each day towards that end does not seem onerous, particularly given that many more senior bureaucrats already work far longer hours anyway, many of which are unpaid.

…   …   …

… the thinking that a public servant’s work obligations are governed by the bundy clock or time sheet … is perverse. In cleaving to it so dogmatically, the ASU and its members might care to recall an industrial incident in Melbourne last October somewhat similar to that foreshadowed by Mr Lapidos. After factory workers were asked to vote on a package of measures to fund pay rises—including one authorising a decrease in Sunday overtime pay from double time and a half to double time, the union took legal action. It was successful in preserving the status quo, but their members ultimately lost everything when their employer, Toyota, announced shortly after that it could no longer profitably make cars in Australia.

I concur. I have repeatedly made the point that union officials like Mr Lapidos are jeopardising members' jobs for their unsustainable wage demands.

What is Mr Lapidos actually asking for? He wants all pay points to increase by four per cent each year compounded, with allowances increasing by the same amount. He wants an extension of the Christmas closedown. He wants 15-minute tea-breaks for morning and afternoon tea to be included in the EBA to recognise this longstanding custom and practice. He wants employees to be able to use flex leave with a tea-break without prior approval so 'employees do not risk being on unauthorised absence if they return late from their break'. He wants personal leave both with and without pay without the requirement for documentation to be extended from 8 to 15 days. He wants superannuation contributions to be increased from the 15.4 per cent of salary already made. He wants flextime to allow shift workers to take additional breaks for private purposes such as 'to move a car or to take a smoking break.' He wants additional security arrangements to escort employees to the closest train station, bus stop and parking facility at the end of a late shift. He wants no hot-desking, he wants more working from home, he wants better mobile phone reception and he wants any other claim the ASU deems necessary.

Senator Dastyari interjecting—

Unlike you, he is, Mr Dastyari. Moreover, Mr Lapidos seems to think that his members have an automatic right to a share of savings from the ATO restructuring and downsizing, rather than this benefit going to taxpayers. For his information, the government's policy for bargaining in the Australian Public Service requires any remuneration increases to be offset by genuine productivity gains. It is wrong to automatically equate productivity improvements with a cut to employees' conditions. Agencies are not required to increase working hours under the bargaining policy, but clearly some are considering it as a productivity offset for increasing remuneration.

Clearly, the ASU's Tax Office negotiating position is completely out of touch with community expectations and, unfortunately, Mr Lapidos does not seem to get this. He was also reported in the Adelaide Advertiser as saying his union already had, 'secret' industrial action in mind that could stretch over months. He was quoted as saying: 'it'—industrial action—'will be designed to make it difficult to implement workplace change and affect the government's collection of revenue.' He was also quoted as saying:

It might only cost them a few hundred million dollars a year, but if we can do that, that will suit us.

What a dinosaur this man is!

Surely the time has come when unions and management can try to negotiate win-win situations. In the current parlous economic situation bequeathed to us by Labor, union officials should realise that job security is paramount and that excessive demands and threats of industrial sabotage—never a good idea at the best of times—will cost everyone, public servants included.

I conclude by noting that on 13 June the Australian Public Service Commission released the 2013 APS remuneration report. It shows that, in the last decade, annual increments in the median Australian Public Service wage totalled 42 per cent, compared to movements in the CPI which totalled only 28 per cent. In other words, over the last decade the average Public Service wage outstripped inflation by 14 per cent and outstripped increments in the private sector by six per cent. With the country so deep in debt and deficit thanks to the Labor Party, clearly, Mr Lapidos and the ASU and the CPSU need to get some perspective. They need to be relevant and they need to be reasonable, and by doing so they will protect the jobs of all of their members.