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Most federal public servants' salaries didn't budge last year as the stalemate on new wage deals dragged on. However, senior executives' pay began to climb after a hiatus: the median salary of an SES officer rose by 1.4 per cent in 2015. The Public Service Commission's latest remuneration report shows the typical Canberra bureaucrat – an executive level 1 employee – had a salary of $108,382 on December 31. She earned $127,701 in total, which includes benefits such as superannuation and allowances. It was only $11 more than a year earlier. By comparison, total pay across all industries in Australia rose by an average of 2.2 per cent last year. The report also shows public servants are promoted far more slowly than they were last decade. The median time spent in the same job level was 6.3 years – more than twice the time recorded in 2008. Wage deals covering most public servants expired more than two years ago, in July 2014. A large number of staff have now not had a general pay rise for more than three years. The Abbott government introduced a tough approach to bargaining in 2014, which forced government workplaces to scrap some benefits, fund pay rises with savings – on top of those demanded by the efficiency dividend – and cap annual increases at 2 per cent. Many public servants have protested against the restrictions, including by striking. About three in four staff still lack a new deal to replace their expired agreement. However, the commission says negotiations are progressing, and 24 new wage deals were struck in 2015. "As a number of these were made late in the year, it is unlikely that first general wage increases were in pay systems by December 31, 2015" when the pay data was collected, the report said. Senior executives were unaffected as they are rarely employed under enterprise agreements. The report also cited other factors that had affected pay growth, such as the Abbott government's recruitment "freeze". "The result of lower employee mobility over the last few years is that a large proportion of APS employees are remaining at the same classification in the same agency," the report said. "When employees remain at the same classification for long periods, they are likely to have advanced through the salary scale and reached the top for their classification." However, the Community and Public Sector Union said the latest pay data underlined "how badly the Turnbull government's harsh, unreasonable and unworkable public sector bargaining policy has failed and why it must be changed". National secretary Nadine Flood said the government's "hypocrisy on this front is astounding, with politicians giving themselves and their most senior executives decent pay rises at the same time as they try to starve out lower-paid workers who are just trying to provide for their families". "These workers and their families have now had their wages frozen for more than three years. They deserve better," she said. "That's why hundreds of Immigration and Border Force workers will be striking on Friday, including at international airports, and why broader industrial action is also looming." The union wrote to the Prime Minister last week seeking an "urgent meeting to resolve [the] bargaining mess". The Remuneration Tribunal awarded federal politicians, judges and top bureaucrats a 2 per cent pay rise in January. Most of those office holders had not received a raise for 2½ years.