Immigration and border control staff at Australia’s air and seaports have overwhelmingly voted down the government’s latest pay offer and will continue to take industrial action.
Nine out of 10 staff members at the Department of Immigration and Border Protection who took part in the ballot voted against the enterprise agreement. The department includes Australian Border Force, a newly created organisation which began operations on 1 July.
The community and public sector union (CPSU) said the government’s offer would leave staff $8,000 a year out of pocket because of the loss of allowances and entitlements such as loading for working in regional and remote areas.
“The creation of border force through this merger of Customs and Immigration has been difficult and divisive. What we’ve seen today is this workforce coming together to reject a fundamentally flawed agreement,” the national secretary of the CPSU, Nadine Flood, said. “This result shows that even middle managers who are being pushed to act as strike breakers in this dispute must have voted strongly to reject this agreement.”
Strikes affecting airports, cruise ships and international postal delivery centres began on Monday and will continue until 30 September.
Flood is calling on the new employment minister, Michaelia Cash, to sit down with the unions over the long-running industrial dispute.
Guardian Australia has sought comment from Cash, who was only sworn in as employment minister on Monday, following Malcolm Turnbull’s ascension to prime minister last week.
Departments representing nearly 50% of the commonwealth public service workforce have taken industrial action since the Coalition was elected in September 2013.
Turnbull flagged a more collaborative approach to industrial relations when he spoke to the ABC’s 7.30 program on Monday night.
“The challenge for us is not to wage war with unions or the workers that they seek to represent, but really to explain what the challenges are and then lay out some reform options,” the prime minister said.
Flood urged Turnbull to act on those words.
“Right now there is a massive group of working mums and dads, your own employees, who are worried and angry about cuts to their rights and conditions,” Flood said. “The public sector will play a vital role in government’s effort to ensure Australia’s future prosperity and its staff deserve better than the attacks they’ve faced to date.”
The shadow employment minister, Brendan O’Connor, has also called for a more constructive approach to workplace reform.
“Labor always prefers the parties to industrial disputes to sit down and resolve their differences and the Turnbull Liberal government can lead the way by abandoning the government’s unfair public sector bargaining framework, which currently expects its workforce to accept the unacceptable,” O’Connor said.
