Saturday, December 12, 2015

CPSU: Remuneration Tribunal – Double Standards at Work

The main public servants' union has urged federal politicians to knock back their latest pay rise until the long-running wage dispute in the bureaucracy is resolved.

The Community and Public Sector Union said public servants would be "outraged and offended" at the Remuneration Tribunal's decision on Wednesday to recommend a 2 per cent pay increase for parliamentarians, government agency heads, judges and other public office holders.

Most of the senior officials have not received a pay rise for 2½ years, as a result of a wage freeze proposed in May 2014 by then prime minister Tony Abbott.

Next month, the base salary of a parliamentary backbencher will rise to $199,040 a year, while Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's will climb to $517,504.

The independent tribunal said an increase was due given the length of the freeze and the need to keep politicians and other senior officials' remuneration "at appropriate levels over the longer term to attract and retain people of the calibre required for these important high-level offices".

"The tribunal is generally conservative in its approach to annual increases and, in this case, is conscious of the government's continuing policy of wage restraint for the Australian Public Service and non-APS government agencies," it said.

However, CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood said it would be hypocritical for politicians and top bureaucrats to accept a "no-strings-attached" pay rise when they were demanding that public servants only accept wage increases if they traded off their conditions.

"The double standard at work here is breath-taking. These same politicians are demanding ordinary mums and dads working on average wages in the public sector accept cuts to their rights to get 2 per cent and their wage freeze lifted," Ms Flood said.

"And now the same politicians are quietly lifting the pay freeze for themselves so they get an easy 2 per cent increase, no trade-offs, no questions asked. Even more galling is the fact that politicians' previous pay hike back in 2012-13 was a staggering 37.7 per cent."

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