The ACT government could move thousands of its casual and contracted staff into permanent jobs after bowing to pressure and promising a taskforce to investigate how many it should employ in secure roles.
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A dramatic fall in the territory public service's estimated ranks of nearly 6000 casuals, temporary staff and contractors could follow the probe, announced after the Community and Public Sector Union directed attacks at the government, accusing it of a damaging over-reliance on insecure work.
The union mounted a campaign against the growth in ACT government agency staff employed on casual terms or under contracts, raising fears that the trend would diminish health services and impose hardship on workers.
In a turnaround that could see a bonanza of permanent, ongoing jobs for casual and contracted staff inside the territory's agencies, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr and Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith have said the government would open a taskforce to identify workers who could be permanently employed.
ACT government public servant numbers swelled last year but temporary workers were its fastest-growing legion of staff, adding 217 to the territory public service workforce, which reached 22,000. Permanent employees grew by 233, and casuals (81) made up the rest of the increase.
The CPSU puts the number of casuals and contractors at 5,900, and the ACT government in 2017 estimated its headcount of temporary or casual employees was 5,200.
The union believes most of the ACT public service's contractors and casuals should be in permanent roles, and opened up a front against the government, saying its members had raised fears about the harm insecure work caused services.
CPSU regional secretary Brooke Muscat-Bentley called the taskforce an important win for the ACT government's staff.
“We know that far too many ACT Public Service workers are employed casually or through other forms of insecure work, particularly in key areas like ACT Health," she said.
"CPSU members have spent many months working towards this point, pushing the ACT government to do the right thing by workers and the right thing by public services."
The union would use its position on the taskforce to push the government to quickly move staff from casual work or contracts into permanent jobs, Ms Muscat-Bentley said.
"We want workers out of limbo and in secure jobs within weeks, not sometime in 2019.”
New research from left-wing think tank the Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work earlier this year found less than half of working Australians had a permanent full-time job with leave entitlements.
The ACT government has swelled its ranks of temporary and casual workers by 600 since 2014.
It said its taskforce will review employment across its public services with a view to creating or amending policies to minimise the use of labour-hire, casual, temporary and contract employment.
A spokesman for Ms Stephen-Smith said the government genuinely needed temporary, casual and labour-hire employment for relief staffing in schools and hospitals, specialist and short-term projects, or where specialist skills were required in fields supplied only by consultancies and contractors.
"The ACT government has committed to reviewing and transitioning workers to permanent employment where possible and where it is the employee’s preference," he said.
This year's territory budget showed the government would expand the workforces of its health, justice and education directorates as it pours money into increased staffing at the agencies.
