The Guardian 26 April, 2006
West Australia:
State Public Servants rally over pay claim
On Wednesday April 12, members of the Community and Public Sector Union/Civil Service Association (CPSU/CSA) rallied at the Perth Convention Centre to consider what action they were going to take over the Western Australian Government’s refusal to negotiate further on their pay claim.
Close to 700 members and officials heard from their Branch Secretary Toni Walkington of how knowledge and skill shortages were affecting the Government’s ability to recruit and retain quality staff for professional positions in a number of agencies, including the Health Department and Department of Agriculture where 17 Field Officer positions remain unfilled.
This comes on the heels of the outrageous revelations in the previous week’s West Australian newspaper that "the State Salaries and Allowances Tribunal had awarded pay rises of between 7 and 24 percent for 84 highly paid CEOs and other departmental heads."
The highest increases were for the Directors General of the Education Department and the Department of Premier and Cabinet who will get an extra $66,500 a year (the annual salary of a base level public servant is less than $40,000).
State Treasurer Eric Ripper attempted to justify the increases by saying that the big salaries were necessary "to keep WA’s top bureaucrats from being poached by a rampant private sector and other state governments".
However, what most CPSU/CSA members (who are seeking an increase of 10 percent over two years) found particularly galling and hypocritical was the statement by Mr Ripper that, "What’s appropriate for 80 odd very senior people at the top of the public service is not appropriate for 98,000 public sector workers."
One of the five motions which were passed almost unanimously by the meeting condemned these comments by the Treasurer and reminded him that the highly paid CEO’s and Government would not be able to achieve their outcomes and objectives without the efforts of all their staff, and that it must make an offer to members which reflects their efforts and contributions to the work of government.
In speaking to the motion, delegate Richard Titelius urged the meeting to question if this was a Labor Government or if it had become a party of the capitalist classes and whether it had forgotten that the ALP was formed in the 1890s as the political arm of the union movement to represent the interests of the working class.
"If this was a real Labor Government", he added, "It would appropriately address the needs of the workers by making a genuine offer on the pay claim."
Other speakers addressed motions in regard to providing adequate facilities and incentives for public servants to work in the many rural and remote areas of WA; on the need for adequate funding and staffing of programs for those disadvantaged in the community; and that the eight percent being offered by the Government did not match inflation.
The Government also needed to provide adequate training and development for staff in rural and remote areas to help them undertake the demanding work expected of them.
Toni Walkington also reminded the meeting that the information on shortages of skilled and committed staff in the public sector was coming from reports which the Government had itself commissioned, including the Youth Report on shortages of services and facilities for young people.
These include the Recruitment, Retention and Retirement report which focuses on the impending need to cope with the retirement of up to 45 percent of the state public sector in the next ten years; the Mahoney Inquiry into shortcomings of prison security, deficiencies in the states prison programs and the functioning of the Parole Board; the Inspector of Custodial Services report (the management of some of the states custodial services by a private contractor); and the Gordon Inquiry into child abuse and mismanagement amongst Aboriginal communities.
Ms Walkington concluded the rally by issuing a challenge on behalf of members: "Our message to the Government is that while they may think it is over and they have made their final offer, they haven’t. We are not going to cease our campaign until we get a better offer."
Action in support of this claim includes refusing to answer phones, working to rule, closing offices early and the possibility of a full scale strike affecting sections of or the entire public sector.
At the time of going to press the government had made a revised offer of 4.5 percent for the first year backdated from February 27, 2006, and a further four percent the following year.
The offer is close to what the union had been seeking and the offer will now be put to a meeting of all CPSU/CSA delegates on Thursday April 27.