State Government Not Happy

The 21 day compulsory conciliation period with Fair Work expired on Saturday and the Government has still not made a decent wages offer.

Having failed to make any further wages offer and now facing Fair Work arbitration on its wages policy, the Government asked for CPSU consent to have the 21 days extended.

CPSU would not consent to this further extension.  

The government is only interested in further stalling.  

7 months is long enough for workers to wait for a real wage offer.  

The government's bargaining behaviour, as outlined, has been disingenuous from the beginning, poorly organised and in bad faith.

This behaviour was evidenced further when CPSU received an e-mail late on Friday night from Treasury effectively questioning the jurisdictional validity of existing Agreement entitlements but unspecified.

         The State is reviewing the proposed VPS agreement.  That review has disclosed that the current draft contains a number of clauses that:

         - may contravene the implied limitations referred to in Re AEU [1995] 184 CLR 188, and/ or
         - may be excluded from the referral of powers set out in the Fair Work (Commonwealth Powers) Act 2009 (Referral Act).

        The State will need to consider its position in relation to matters that contravene the implied limitations in Re AEU or that fall outside the Referral Act and is not in a position to agree to them until the conclusion of the review.

I rejected that threat.  

CPSU will defend its members’ entitlements and continues to seek wages parity for the workforce with recent wage settlements for police officers.

Fair Work will shortly commence the process to have our wages arbitrated.

The Government still has time to make a decent wages offer.

Fair Work will issue the outcome as a workplace determination