Dan Andrews calls time ahead of Victoria’s summer of public sector strikes

By Julian Bajkowski

September 27, 2023

Dan Andrews
Dan Andrews. (AAP Image/James Ross)

When it comes to going out on a high, picking the perfect moment is everything.

Victoria’s outgoing premier Dan Andrews will leave the top job just in time to dodge a series of potentially disruptive strikes and damaging brawls with key public sector unions, as staff running trams, trains and the fire brigade all line up to give the state government a serve over stagnant conditions and pay.

As the so-called strike season begins in earnest, successful protected action ballots lodged with the Fair Work Commission reveal the Rail Tram and Bus Union (RTBU), the Communications, Electrical, Plumbing Union (CEPU), and the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union reveal members have voted-up legal triggers to authorise strike action across both Metro Trains and Yarra Trams, two of the state’s biggest public transit providers.

The strike authorisations come as public transit providers, which were essentially privatised in the late 1990s, knuckle down to negotiations with unions as a raft of enterprise agreements expire and need to be renegotiated.

Victorian firefighters, represented by the United Firefighters Union (UFU) held a mass rally in Melbourne’s CBD on Tuesday after pay talks collapsed over conditions and a skinny 3% per year offer, with negotiations returning to the Fair Work Commission. The firie’s union is running a precedent case at the industrial court, but it’s also shaming politicians every inch of the mile.

“The 2023 bushfire season is expected to be the worst since the Black Summer Fires,” said United Firefighters Union Victorian Secretary Peter Marshall.

“But instead of focusing on how they will protect their communities, professional firefighters must now rush to protect their own safety and working conditions against attacks from Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) Commissioner Gavin Freeman and Emergency Services Minister Jaclyn Symes.”

Marshall said that instead of supporting professional firefighters as they confronted the coming bushfire season, Freeman and Symes “have stabbed them in the back and have thrown two years of hard work into the flames.”

“The Andrews government has refused to replace outdated trucks, left fire stations in disrepair, refused to update cancer laws, slashed funding for aerial firefighting resources and stripped essential bushfire safety advertising from both The Age and Herald Sun.”

Also sizing up for a fight are the unions representing staff that run a large chunk of Melbourne’s iconic tram network. The RTBU, CEPU and AMWU have all voted up protected action at Yarra Trams that could potentially disrupt daily travel around the city.

The Andrews government has repeatedly hammered home its argument that the state urgently needs to retire debt after COVID, using the financial imperative as the main reason for scuttling the Commonwealth Games that were to be held around regional Victoria in 2026.

The Victorian branch of the Community and Public Sector Union recently outed the state’s Department of Health for creating a razor gang to find a way to help delete 4,000 public servants as part of the state budget in May.

In a stand-off with the massive Department of Health and its minister, the CPSU took the government to task for signing up to one set of conditions in the enterprise agreement that put redeployment before redundancy, and then trying to wriggle off the hook when times got tight.

Andrews’ likely replacement, current transport minister Jacinta Allan, will have to find someone to deal with transport unions if she secures the top job.

The state currently has a wages policy that says pay increases cannot exceed 3% a year, with many agreements spanning as long as four years.

In NSW, the Chris Minns government recently scrapped the previous government’s 2.5% annual wage rise cap but was immediately assailed by unions like the Health Services Union when it tried to scrimp on election promises.

Unions in both Victoria and NSW campaigned extensively for Labor in both states during the last elections with support broadly conditional on securing better wage deals for union members and workers.

It has been reported that the UFU threatened to campaign against Labor in marginal Victorian seats over changes to workers’ compensation for firies who go on to develop cancer.


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