Access all areas: growing union influence in Anthony Albanese’s expanding public service
Union officials are exerting greater influence over the ballooning public service, with the Albanese government instructing agency chiefs to empower union delegates and hold regular forums with union leaders.
Union officials are exerting greater influence over the ballooning Australian Public Service, with the Albanese government instructing agency chiefs to empower union delegates and hold regular forums with union leaders through a powerful new committee.
The Australian can reveal union power across the expanding public service is growing, as APS bosses follow the government’s rules of engagement with union delegates including granting them access to new staff and providing right of entry across the bureaucracy.
Australian Public Service Commission documents show Commissioner Gordon de Brouwer last year quietly established an APS Consultative Committee (ACC), which includes representatives from up to 11 unions, 16 departments and 19 agencies.
The committee, which has met five times since mid-2024 and most recently on June 17 after the Prime Minister’s landslide election victory, is understood to be the first of its kind, forcing senior bureaucrats to deal directly with union officials on major issues.
Unions currently represented on the ACC are: the Community and Public Sector Union, United Workers Union, Australian Services Union, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation, Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and Professionals Australia.
Terms of reference for the ACC also included the Communications Workers Union, Civil Air Operations Officers’ Association of Australia, the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
Its establishment comes on top of two sets of instructions distributed by the Albanese government after the 2022 election outlining how agencies should co-operate with unions.
At the post-election meeting of the ACC, chaired by APSC workplace reform and diversity first assistant commissioner Jo Talbot with support from ATO assistant commissioner Mel Bopping, CPSU officials questioned a proposed overhaul of performance management in the APS, which is on track to exceed 213,000 public servants in 2025-26.
In a report to members, the CPSU said it raised concerns about a draft non-SES performance framework due to be implemented by the end of 2028.
“The CPSU has raised concerns that it includes a number of elements that are inconsistent with many APS enterprise agreements, including performance ratings, weightings for behaviours vs outcomes, and procedural fairness requirements,” CPSU officials reported.
“Members remain protected by current enterprise agreements, and the changes proposed would need to be negotiated in bargaining.”
Union leaders at the June 17 meeting also discussed the need for strong safeguards around the use of artificial intelligence in the APS, including transparency, the protection of workers’ rights and strict consultation obligations.
CPSU representatives also raised feedback from members pushing for recruitment and selection processes across the APS to be “fair and based on merit”. Top issues CPSU members wanted raised at ACC meetings included “ensuring newly won enterprise agreement conditions are followed in practice, improvements to recruitment practices in the APS, secure jobs in the APS, addressing APS capability including critical skills gaps, diversity in the APS, a union voice in APS reform, and work health and safety”.
Public Service and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, who was a CPSU organiser from 1998 to 2001, strongly pushed back against former opposition leader Peter Dutton’s election policy to axe 41,000 federal public servants. Many of the cuts would have focused on the almost 70,000 bureaucrats based in Canberra.
At the May 3 election, Senator Gallagher’s Labor ticket finished behind David Pocock in the ACT Senate race after the independent picked up an 18 percentage point swing. Federal Labor MP David Smith clung on to his southern ACT lower-house seat of Bean by 700 votes after Climate 200-backed independent candidate Jessie Price picked up 26.4 per cent of the primary vote.
In both federal and territory elections, Labor has traditionally benefited from the strong support of Canberra’s public servants. Andrew Barr’s Labor won a seventh consecutive term in government at last year’s ACT election.
The Australian can also reveal that months after the 2022 election, the APSC released two circulars providing guidance to public service bosses on how they must interact with trade unions representatives.
A 24-point circular titled “Union representation in Commonwealth agencies” said union delegates should be granted access to facilities, allowed to exercise their industrial rights and communicate with staff and have access to new employees as part of induction processes.
“In supporting and facilitating the legitimate role of union delegates, agencies should provide union delegates with reasonable paid time during normal working hours,” the circular said.
The circular said delegates should be allowed to represent union members at relevant union forums, consultative committees or bargaining. It also said union delegates should be afforded reasonable access to paid-time training during working hours contingent on operational requirements.
“Agencies should apply the right of entry and freedom of association provisions of the Fair Work Act and, where applicable, right of entry provisions in work health safety legislation, in a fair and reasonable manner,” the circular said.
“This will ensure a balance between the rights of unions to represent their members in the workplace, hold discussions and investigate suspected contraventions of fair work instruments and other relevant laws.
“Agencies and unions may agree to arrangements that provide more flexible access than provided for under the right of entry provisions set out in the Fair Work Act, such as access to employees in their workplace or paid time meetings.”
A second 20-point circular, which was also released on October 6, 2022, said: “Genuine and effective consultation with employees and relevant unions is sound management practice.
“The benefits to agencies of genuine and effective employee and union consultation include enhanced employee engagement and morale, increased productivity, access to new ideas, better outcomes in change implementation, stronger employee commitment to agency goals and objectives and improved staff retention.”
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