Page 4461 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 1993
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QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Government Service - Enterprise Bargaining
MRS CARNELL: Madam Speaker, my question without notice is directed to the Chief Minister in her capacity as Treasurer. Is it a fact that negotiations between the ACT Government and the Automotive, Metals and Engineering Union on the question of productivity bargaining have been torpedoed at the last minute by you and your Treasury officials? Are these negotiations in fact dead in the water?
MS FOLLETT: No, it is not a fact that these negotiations are dead in the water. The negotiations are continuing, and they are continuing via the agreed process. The fact is that since August the Government has been negotiating with the union movement on progressing enterprise bargaining within the ACT Government Service. As members know, we take a whole-of-service view. We are seeking to handle both enterprise bargaining and the budget related restructuring in a cohesive way. The central coordinating group and the local bargaining centres have focused on the means to progress the achievement of budget savings concurrently with efficiency and productivity measures which may lead to productivity based pay increases.
No agreement has been reached on what order of pay outcomes might be achieved over the two-year period that is proposed for the agreement, but the unions, as members will know, have made a claim for a 4 per cent wage increase over those two years. It will be important for both management and unions to keep track of the value of the productivity and efficiency measures that are negotiated and implemented over the two years, so that both can be satisfied that the concurrent aims of budget restructuring and self-funding pay increases are being achieved. This is why we have sought to have costings kept of various initiatives, and it is a matter of which Treasury has prime carriage.
That accounting aspect does not mean that the Government is taking a negative or cost-cutting approach, to the exclusion of, say, cultural change in the service. We are as anxious as the union movement to take proper advantage of the emphasis of enterprise bargaining on workplace change. I think all members would agree that workplace change is something we must focus on across the ACT Government Service. We have to foster a cooperative culture, and it is also important to enhance the quality of working life for our ACT Government Service officers. The Minister for Industrial Relations, Mr Berry, will be in touch with the union movement. He will be meeting with them soon to discuss aspects of the agreement. I stress that negotiations have not broken down; they are proceeding, and they are proceeding in an orderly manner.
MRS CARNELL: I ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. Chief Minister, do you accept personal responsibility as Treasurer for the incompetence of your office and the department, as outlined in the letter from the AMEU to you on 3 December? That letter states:
The inability at your office and your department to deal with "productivity bargaining" as opposed to making the trade union movement responsible and accountable for "budget outcomes" displays a degree of incompetence rarely seen in any other area AMEU operates in.
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