Police pay deal makes other NSW public servants red with envy

The Minns government has opened an industrial relations world of pain in granting the biggest public sector pay rise to NSW Police with the aim of attracting much-needed recruits and retaining experienced officers.

The massive salary boost of up to 39 per cent over four years for some police officers follows a once-in-a-generation deal in September that made NSW teachers Australia’s highest paid. Under a four-year agreement with the NSW Teachers Federation to alleviate the chronic teacher shortage, salaries rose for both beginners and top-of the scale teachers by nearly $10,000 a year while teachers in middle salary bands received increases of between 4 and 8 per cent.

Police have been offered a massive pay deal after 14 months of negotiations.Credit: Kate Geraghty

The police deal has stunned NSW nurses and midwives. They are on a 24-hour strike supporting their one-year 15 per cent pay rise. Meanwhile, the Rail, Bus and Tram Union is set to hold industrial action that could stop Sydney’s train network on Thursday as they seek a 32 per cent pay rise over four years and a reduction to a 35-hour working week.

Removing the cap on public servants’ pay was a key campaign promise by Chris Minns in opposition. During the campaign, Labor evoked essential services workers who had endured huge stresses during the pandemic – teachers, nurses, paramedics and police – as worthy recipients of pay rises.

Now the impasse between the government and the nurses and midwives has reminded all how public sector wages and union-inflated expectations were always going to be a problem for Minns.

Now he said the police pay rise will be funded by reforms to the Police Blue Ribbon Insurance Scheme that have apparently opened a new income stream for the government. It flows from legislation introduced to parliament recently to curtailed taxpayers’ exposure to the police compensation scheme.

No such luck for the nurses and midwives, who bravely pushed for better nurses-to-patient ratios as their No.1 priority to ensure improved service delivery and stop the flight interstate caused by high levels of exhaustion and lower wages.

Now Minns has refused to budge from the 10.5 per cent offer over three years unless savings could be found. He has also chosen to conflate their demands for better ratios and more money and said they could not have both. But they are separate issues. The government sees the sense of rewarding police to attract recruits and retain experience, but is blind to the same plight facing nurses and midwives, instead penalising them for wanting better care for patients.

No matter how the government defends the police deal, it has driven a wedge between public sector workforces and raised fears it will trigger a wages explosion and industrial action. There are also doubts about whether the increases, having been baked into the budget, are sustainable in the long term.

The Herald wants public servants to be paid respectfully and deal with the personnel drain to other states, but the lopsided police deal is a big hit to the budget and an invitation to further chaos.

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