Australian Taxation Office management’s attempt to have staff work another nine minutes a day deemed too controversial

Tax office push to have its staff work until 5pm dropped after backlash

A push to make Australian Taxation Office staff work another nine minutes a day proved so contentious that it had to be dropped.

Tax office staff have been locked in protracted bargaining negotiations with management for three years.

The ATO’s 2011 bargaining agreement states that standard working hours are between 8.30am to 12.30pm and 1.30pm to 4.51pm.



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The ABC has reported that management attempted to extend the finish time to 5pm, before a significant backlash forced them to scrap the proposal.

The workers were being asked to work extra time with no extra pay, while being offered a 0.8 per cent pay rise.

Briefings to staff reportedly said the proposal was the most disliked of any changes flagged in the new enterprise agreement.

“Of all the changes proposed in the enterprise agreement (EA) package, this was the one you told us you disliked the most,” the briefing reportedly said. “It was clear from your feedback that this had to go and I think it goes a long way to demonstrating that we’re genuine about getting an EA in place for the next three years.”

Tax office staff have been without a pay rise since 2013 and have now rejected three offers.

The Community and Public Sector Union says it is fighting to prevent a further erosion of conditions and entitlements at the ATO, saying the agency has already been weakened to such an extent that it can no longer tackle multinational tax avoidance.



The last vote, made in December, resoundingly rejected the proposal of ATO management, with 71% of staff voting “no”. Roughly the same number voted down the previous offer in May and 85% rejected the first offer in December 2015.

The proposal to extend the working hours was dropped after the first no vote.

The CPSU rejected the notion that tax office staff went home en-masse at 4.51pm, saying it was ludicrous. Its national secretary, Nadine Flood, said the change was taken off the table long ago.

“Our members are working longer hours than ever, including unpaid overtime, because of over 4000 jobs that have been slashed from the ATO in recent years,” she said. “This is old news. This proposal was taken off the table well over a year ago. Clearly it wasn’t the sticking point to reaching a new agreement because there have been two more emphatic ‘No’ votes from tax office staff since.

“With 33 cuts to conditions on the table at the time, this was never the only issue for our members, though they were understandably upset at a cut to their hourly pay rate via changing working hours at the same time as they were being told to accept a measly pay offer at that stage of 0.8% a year.”



After the last offer was rejected, Flood said the cuts to the ATO were “making it easier for multinational companies and wealthy individuals to dodge paying their fair share”.



Earlier this month, the smaller Australian Services Union alleged ATO management was not complying with good faith bargaining requirements and sought advice from lawyers.



The union said that made any further attempt at conciliation “futile” and sought to have the negotiations back before the Fair Work Commission for hearing.



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The scale of cuts at the ATO has been significant in the past three years. The CPSU says more than 4400 jobs have been cut from the agency.

Annual reports suggest 906 jobs were cut in 2013-14, 2200 in 2014-15 and 590 in 2015-16.

The ATO has experienced significant controversy over the summer.

Critical online services suffered significant outages following the failure of new Hewlett Packard Enterprise storage systems.

The outages left the ATO website down and took vital tools like the tax agent portal offline.

The IT failures sparked calls for compensation to tax agents and accountants and calls for heads to roll within the agency.