CSIRO is limiting pay rises for Australians whose work supports Nasa despite the fact they are paid out of Nasa’s budget

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

​A group of Australian engineers whose work supports the Nasa deep space network are targeting the space agency with industrial action at a communication centre in Canberra.

The employees of the Canberra deep space communication complex in Tidbinbilla are employed by Australia’s science agency the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), which is limiting their pay rises despite the fact they are paid out of Nasa’s budget.

Unions have blamed the Australian government’s bargaining policy – which limits pay rises to 2% a year or less – for an impasse in the nine-month bargaining dispute.

At 2.20pm on Wednesday more than 70 operational, engineering and administrative staff, will delay the handover of communications responsibilities from the Goldstone deep space complex in California with a one-hour stoppage in a bid to bring the dispute to Nasa management’s attention.

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The industrial action involves members of the Electrical Trades Union, Professionals Australia, and the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union.

ETU Canberra organiser Mick Koppie told Guardian Australia the complex in Tidbinbilla was one of three tracking stations spread 120 degrees apart, each one a third of the way around the world, to provide Nasa with global deep space tracking and communication capabilities.

He said staff in California would have to work overtime to cover the stoppage, otherwise screens tracking dozens of interplanetary spacecraft missions in the Nasa deep space network would “go black”.

The industrial action was “not taken lightly” but was designed to make Nasa leadership aware of what Koppie called the “mismanagement” of the vital facility.

Koppie said the unions had asked for existing pay rises of about 2.8% a year to be rolled over into a new three-year agreement and for planned roster changes cutting workers’ shifts and reducing take-home pay to be phased in over time.

Koppie said it was an “extraordinary situation” because workers had been told the restrictive wages policy would apply to their wages “despite the fact that not one cent of funding for the Tidbinbilla deep space complex comes from the commonwealth government”.

He queried why the CSIRO, which concluded an agreement with its other workers in August, did not apply to the government for an exemption from the policy.

“Instead, they told Nasa the workers will only get 1-2% pay rises as if it were set in concrete; that’s not good faith bargaining.”

Koppie said industrial action was likely to escalate further if CSIRO management refused to budge, potentially causing disruption to Nasa’s deep space tracking and communication capabilities.



A CSIRO spokesman told Guardian Australia the agency was “continuing to discuss” the new workplace deal with staff and “is committed to negotiate a mutually agreed outcome”.

“The action taken by the staff will not compromise the day-to-day operation of the station,” he said.

In a separate dispute, the Community and Public Sector Union has challenged the bargaining policy by asking the industrial umpire, the Fair Work Commission, to grant pay rises to its immigration department staff above the policy’s limits.