- Breakthrough Narrows Items to be Arbitrated by Fair Work

A Heads of Agreement for a new Child Protection Practitioner (CPP) Classification Structure was signed with the Department of Human Services this morning Thursday 29 March 2012, in Fair Work Australia narrowing further the issues submitted for arbitration in our Public Service wages dispute.

The new Child Protection re-classification arrangements will improve some staffing issues and pay rates for child protection, community youth justice, and secure welfare employees of the Department.

Child protection practitioners (CPP) will receive 1% to 14.5% increases upon translation to the new structure with scope for further progression horizons paid on performance.  

These increases arise from the agreed re-classification of work within the new CPP structure and will be additional to the general VPS wide salary increase ordered by Fair Work.

Community youth justice and specialist child protection workers will receive a 3% increase under this agreement in addition to any general VPS salary increase awarded.
 
Secure welfare workers will also translate to a Community Youth and Families (CYF) stream of the new CPP structure and then receive a 3% translation payment.

The new CPP classification creates an increased graduate entry rate of $55,795 per year.

Almost 1,500 government employees in child protection services will benefit from this settlement which resolves outstanding items in the Department specific appendix that forms part of the broader Victorian Public Service Agreement.  

The VPS Agreement covers almost 35,000 Government employees in 23 Departments and Agencies representing another 400 specialist occupations.

Workers who are required to undertake night shift will receive a 20% shift allowance. (up from 15%)  

There will be a minimum ten hour break between work shifts for all covered and a review of the Rural after hours provision.

52 additional senior practitioners are included and five days additional leave has been agreed for CPP Grade 3-6 and CYF Grade 2-6 staff.’

Overtime caps are lifted as part of this agreement and CPP Grade 4 and 5 and CYF Grade 4 and 5 staff have access to overtime at their rate of pay.

Further consultation will occur over detailed planning for the regions and a workload review committee with an independent chair will be established.  

Congratulations to all our members for achieving this outcome.