The Australian Taxation Office's latest pay offer to staff has split the unions that represent its workers.
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Australian Service Union members reacted angrily this week after their union's tax secretary, Jeff Lapidos, and tax president, Peter Chaplin, advised them to accept a wage rise worth about 3 per cent a year.
The larger union in the Tax Office, the Community and Public Sector Union, strongly opposes the deal, saying it's effectively a pay cut after inflation is taken into account.
The two unions collaborated in June to campaign against a slightly smaller pay offer. The ATO's 23,700 staff rejected that deal with a 59 per cent ''no'' vote.
CPSU deputy secretary Rupert Evans said yesterday he was unaware Mr Lapidos had changed his mind until the Tax Office announced it had secured the ASU's support.
Yet an ASU assistant secretary, Gaetano Greco, has warned his own union it has no right to back the latest deal.
In an email circulated within the Tax Office, Mr Greco also accused a senior ATO executive of misleading Parliament last week.
''In the Senate estimates committee, our second commissioner Jenny Granger misled the committee by stating, 'We have the support of one union. We have two unions in the Tax Office. The ASU is supporting the current proposal'.
''As far as I can tell, the only ASU member supporting the proposal publicly is Jeff Lapidos himself.''
However, Mr Lapidos told The Canberra Times yesterday he had every right, as union secretary, to recommended a ''yes'' vote.
''I negotiated an agreement with the Tax Office a fortnight ago and won very significant improvements in return for me agreeing to recommend the offer.''
He said the new offer included performance bonuses and greater flexibility for most ATO staff, and the CPSU was ''kidding itself'' if it believed the Government would pay more than 3 per cent a year.
''We've got some idiots in the Tax Office who want to take industrial action.
''There is no way a pay rise postponed until next financial year will be higher than a pay rise this financial year ... There is no possibility of bringing the Government to its knees and those people who want to try are living in another world.''
Mr Lapidos also said the latest offer was the best deal staff would receive and another delay would ''ensure a worse outcome''.
Yet Mr Evans said his members decided that, even with the bonus payments, the proposed deal ''doesn't meet current and forecast increases in living costs''.
''There's also immense anger among staff at the hypocrisy of the commissioner actually seeking a 58per cent pay rise for himself, while restricting his employees who do the work to 3 per cent a year. It's clear that the ATO can afford to pay more in base pay and are choosing not to do so.''