Strikes by immigration and Australian Border Force staff at international airports have been temporarily suspended while the Fair Work Commission mulls their impact on national security.
Community and Public Sector Union members at international airports planned weeks of rolling stoppages starting on the Easter weekend as part of its two-year dispute over pay and conditions.
After the Brussels attacks, the CPSU postponed the strike action but they resumed after the Easter weekend, promising national security would not be affected.
On Friday Border Force applied to the Fair Work Commission to suspend the strikes for three months on the basis they endangered national security. The Fair Work Act allows the commission to terminate or suspend strikes where they threaten “ to endanger the life, the personal safety or health, or the welfare, of the population or of part of it”.
At 6pm on Sunday the commission temporarily suspended the strikes, until the outcome of a Tuesday hearing which will decide the main application for a three-month suspension.
The CPSU criticised the application, saying the immigration department and union had agreed on security-related exemptions in similar action taken by workers over the past 10 months.
The CPSU national secretary, Nadine Flood, said: “This application by the department is entirely at odds with repeated statements from prime minister Malcolm Turnbull ... [who] stated as recently as Wednesday this week that rolling strikes by CPSU members do not pose a threat to security at international airports.
“The reality is this round of rolling strikes is no different from previous industrial action. Our members are absolutely committed to the safety of our community and Australia’s national security.
“That’s why we agreed to the prime minister’s request to suspend our long-planned Easter strike action because of community anxiety over the Brussels attacks occurring just a day before these.
“That’s why we’ve agreed to more than 50 exemptions for officers whose work relates to counter-terrorism and security since this industrial action began almost a year ago.”
Border Force said in a statement it had not sought to suspend the protected industrial action capriciously, but because it believed it posed an unacceptable risk to the community.
It said “there is real risk that over time the industrial action will affect the capacity of Australian Border Force to protect Australia’s border” against illicit goods in cargo and even returned foreign fighters.
“These risks plus the rapidly diminishing ability of [Border Force] to plug the gaps caused by this round of industrial action are of immediate concern to the Border Force commissioner, who had no sensible alternative but to legally seek a halt to the action being taken.”
Flood also said Border Force had attempted to use the Border Force Act to stop the strikes:
Border Force has spent 48 hrs threatening our members. Now we're in Fair Work, standing firm. PM #fixthismess pic.twitter.com/pG0GTkJn3c
— Nadine Flood (@NadineFloodCPSU) April 2, 2016
Flood was referring to a letter to CPSU members from the Border Force commissioner informing them he was considering directing them back to work using the Border Force Act.
The CPSU told its members in a statement this was an extraordinary escalation of the dispute and an “unprecedented and serious threat to the rights of potentially thousands of CPSU members”.
The union had legal advice the Border Force Act could not override members’ right to strike, it said.
