ATO staff refuse to work extra nine minutes as tax office issues worsen

STAFF at the ATO have rejected a proposal to extend their working hours from 4.51pm to 5pm in line with other departments.

STAFF at the Australian Taxation Office have rejected a push to extend their working hours by nine minutes a day.

ATO employees work some of the shortest hours of any government department, but a recent proposal to extend their day to finish at 5pm was dropped after a backlash, the ABC reported.

The current standard hours are 8.30am to 12.30pm and 1.30pm to 4.51pm. Where an employee’s hours on a particular day exceed 7 hours and 21 minutes, the employee may elect for the extra hours to be deducted from their flextime.

Management said the proposal to extend hours by an extra 4.5 working days a year would have improved productivity and been more in line with community expectations, but proved “highly contentious”.

Staff at the Australian Taxation Office have refused to accept a nine-minute increase to their working day.

The tax office has not been able to come to a new deal since the existing enterprise agreement expired in June 2014, meaning staff have not received a pay rise in almost three years.

An ATO spokeswoman told news.com.au in a statement: “The first offer made to staff included a proposal to increase the length of the working day from 7 hours 21 minutes to 7 hours 30 minutes. This was included in our proposal to staff in late 2015.

“Subsequent offers that we have put to a staff vote maintained conditions that our employees told us mattered most to them, including the standard working day (that is, removing the proposal to increase the length of the working day).”

The ATO is now seeking feedback on the process via a survey. “We remain committed to reaching an agreement that provides a good outcome for staff, the ATO, the Government and the Australian taxpayer,” said the spokeswoman. “This includes ensuring that we can meet our service commitments to the community.”

The tax office has been beset by problems in recent times, with more than 4000 job cuts. In December, the agency’s online system crashed because of a failure in a hardware storage solution provided by Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Northern Territory public servants also work very specific hours.

Thousands of clients were left stranded during the world-first glitch, which tax commissioner Chris Jordan described as the “worst unplanned system outage in recent memory”.

The website was restored almost 48 hours after the outage but there were fears the ATO might be unable to recover some of its data, although it said no taxpayer information had been compromised. It was followed by yet another crash earlier this month.

The Community and Public Sector Union said the proposed change to working hours was “old news” and that issues for ATO staff went much deeper.

CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood said: “The idea that Tax Office staff head home en masse at 4.51pm is ludicrous. Our members are working longer hours than ever, including unpaid overtime, because of over 4000 jobs that have been slashed from the ATO in recent years.

“This was never the only issue for our members, though they were understandably upset at a cut to their hourly pay rate via changing working hours at the same time as they were being told to accept a measly pay offer at that stage of 0.8 per cent a year.

“What’s inefficient and out of step with community expectations is the Turnbull Government cutting thousands of jobs from the agency that polices multinational tax avoidance and demanding the staff who are left cover for that hole while spending three years pursuing a long list of cuts to their rights while sticking them on a wage freeze.”

The controversy over ATO employees’ working hours reflects similar questions in the Northern Territory, where all public servants work from 8am to 4.21pm.

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Originally published as ATO staff refuse to work extra nine minutes as tax office issues worsen