CPSU's lawyers Maurice Blackburn have now served a letter of demand on DJCS after 18 months of raising these concerns while DJCS continues filibustering and stone walling.

CPSU has been in dispute with DJCS over this non payment since March last year because DJCS like other depts have applied language selectively (to avoid our VPS Agreement requirements) like ‘demonstrate measures of excellence’ to ‘exceed expectations’ to deny progression payments to Grade 5-7's staff ostensibly as a budget control feature.

Secretary
Department of Justice and Community Safety

CPSU considers that the Department has engaged in multiple contraventions of the Victorian Public Service Enterprise Agreement 2016 and 2020.

The contraventions arise from the failure by the Department to apply progression to VPS Grades 5-7 employees who received a performance rating of “achieved expectations”.

The contraventions have resulted in multiple underpayments by the Department over many years. Up to 1500 employees across this dept alone who have been shortchanged for a few thousand dollars each over the last 6 years.

Consequently, the scale and number of the contraventions are significant. In that regard, CPSU intends to commence a representative proceeding in the Federal Court of Australia in respect of current and former employees of the Department to remedy the contraventions. In those proceedings, the CPSU will be seeking orders requiring the Department to pay compensation and interest to class members and penalties to the CPSU.

Employment & Industrial Law Section
MAURICE BLACKBURN

We estimate approximately $4 million is owing in this one Department alone and this estimate doesn’t include the potential underpayments from the last two financial years.

Senior non-executive staff employed as Grade 5-7 employees throughout DJCS in Courts, Corrections (Community and Custodial), Youth Justice, Solicitors, Sheriffs, are all impacted.

This is what we refer to as methodical wage theft! 

DJCS data provided to CPSU confirms this in itself because not surprisingly the highest paid non executives Grade 7s (86%) seem to achieve the imposed standard in higher numbers than those in the lower paid Grade 5 (67%).