Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Veteran's Affairs workers reject longer hours and a pay cut

Public servants at the Department of Veterans Affairs have been asked to accept a pay deal of 0.6 per cent per year.

But the proposal, worth less than $9 a week to a typical DVA staffer, comes with strings; a longer working day, a cull of the department's middle management ranks and slower progression up the career ladder.

Veterans' Affairs' offer of 1.75 per cent over three years, is conditional on 57 of the department's 440 executive level officers being shown the door.

There has been restlessness brewing in the department since last year with staff voting overwhelmingly for low-level industrial action to try to force management to make an offer.

Now the department has shown its hand, the main workplace union, the CPSU predicts the proposal is doomed to be rejected.

"This offer doesn't add up," the union's Deputy National Secretary Rupert Evans said.

"In the first year the increase in working hours is larger than the increase in pay so effectively people are being asked to take a pay cut. "Unsurprisingly the early feedback from staff is that people are not going to vote for a pay cut."

"Under this proposal staff lose out in pay and conditions and veterans get fewer people working on their behalf.

"How is that a good deal?"

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