Salaried Enterprise Agreement – It is still all about your job security

Your job security remains the key to the salaried enterprise agreement.

And it is time the government accepted responsibility.

It is the government’s responsibility to respect your contributions to protecting the safety and wellbeing of our community and to respect your commitment to providing the services our community depends upon, especially through these disrupted times.

It is the government’s responsibility to treat you and other government employees with respect.

One measure of the respect in which the government holds its employees is the salaried enterprise agreement.

It is time for the government to meet its responsibility to treat PSA members with respect by working constructively towards finalising a proposed agreement.

The current salaried agreement has served us well. It continues to provide protections for a number of important conditions, the most important being job security.

The government’s formal negotiating position has been to remove Appendix 1 from the agreement, and replace it with a watered down unenforceable policy. That position would make it easier to sack public servants with minimal notice and minimal process. The PSA’s position is that the provisions of Appendix 1, which deals with Retraining, Redeployment and Redundancy, are fundamental to job security and treating employees with respect. Those provisions are simply about dealing with vacancy management and case management in an industrially sound way.

The PSA has at all times, including recently, continued to press upon senior levels of government the seriousness with which our members hold their job security provisions and your commitment to retain all current conditions.

It is time the government came back to the negotiating table with a more reasonable position on your job security so that negotiations on other important conditions and a respectful pay outcome can progress.

It is also time for PSA members to remind the government of our commitment to achieving a fair and respectful agreement as we enter a new phase of the negotiation process. It is time for members to demonstrate - again - our commitment to being treated with respect.

PSA Organisers will be contacting your Worksite Representatives shortly to discuss what actions members would be willing to take to demonstrate to the government that we expect respectful negotiations – and a fair and respectful outcome.

The PSA’s strong negotiating position on maintaining conditions – especially job security - has been based on members’ consistent demonstrated commitment to those important matters. We are now entering a phase where that commitment needs to be reinforced to government.

Speak to your colleagues about what you are willing to do in your workplace to let the government know that we require negotiations to progress in a fair and respectful manner. And keep in touch with your Worksite Representatives about a meeting being scheduled in your workplace.