Scott Morrison slams ABC staff vote for two per cent pay rise

Scott Morrison has blasted ABC staff for voting in favour of a two per cent pay rise while the rest of the public service accept wage freezes through the COVID-19 recession.

Scott Morrison at the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday. Picture: Gary Ramage

Scott Morrison has blasted ABC staff who voted for a 2 per cent pay rise while the rest of the public service accepts wage freezes through the recession.

The Australian understands 80 per cent of employees voted against varying their enterprise agreement to delay a 2 per cent rise and fall into line with core government departments and dozens of agencies that have ­accepted a six-month deferral for their wage rises.

The Prime Minister said on Thursday he was surprised by the ABC staff vote, saying the rest of the media sector and other public servants were experiencing pain.

“There’s 112 commonwealth government agencies that elected to take the freeze and had to have the freeze put in place. Commonwealth public servants are the same. Commonwealth politicians are the same,” he told 2GB radio.

“And so I was quite surprised that they took that view. It was a six-month delay and so both to their fellow public servants and those in the media industry, in particular, I was surprised.”

Publicly funded agencies taking a pay freeze include the Department of Health, Services Australia and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

In May, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher wrote to the ABC saying the government expected it to investigate all options to pause wages in line with other agencies.

The public sector union had urged staff to reject the pay freeze, advising members they deserved the $5m in pay rises due next month.

More than 200 jobs at the ABC have been made redundant this year.

The Community and Public Sector Union’s ABC section secretary Sinddy Ealy told The Australian Mr Morrison was wrong to suggest public broadcasting were not sharing the pain of the recession.

“The fact is ABC staff had a three-month pay freeze last year and lost more than 1100 jobs because of the cuts to the ABC budget — this month alone a further 220 ABC staff lost their jobs,” she said. “So it’s simply false to say ABC staff are not sharing the pain.”