Parliament House cuts & campaign

PSA members at Parliament House met on 13 September to discuss and progress the ongoing industrial campaign against the $2.8 million budget cuts imposed by Treasury. This meeting directed the PSA to seek your support and co-operation for the campaign.

The PSA believes that the reduction in staff at Parliament House will have a negative flow on effect for Ministerial Staffers.

The PSA knows the nature of work for Ministerial Staff is high pressure, high volume and time critical.

We know that a reduction in the number of staff at Parliament House will lead to a reduction in the services provided to you potentially leading to an increase in your workload and a downgrading of the corporate, research, administrative, and IT services you receive.

As such the PSA is keen to meet with all of our members who work in Ministers' offices to provide further information on the budget cuts and the PSA campaign, and to seek your support and suggestions for progressing the campaign.

We will soon contact you to advise you of the date, time and location of such a meeting.

Details on Treasury's Budget Cuts

The remaining $30 million is where Treasury requires the budget cuts to be made.

Of this $30 million, $25 million is spent on salary related costs for Parliamentary Staff and the remaining $5 million is dedicated to operational costs.

Approximately 40 jobs will be cut as a result of the budget cut, including from key areas such as Attendant Services, the Parliamentary Library, building services and catering.

Ironically, the Parliamentary Remunerations Tribunal recently handed down a decision to allow all major party Members of the Legislative Assembly to employ an additional Electorate Officer on sitting days at Parliament House.

This means that on sitting days the reduced Parliamentary staff will have to support up to 75 additional people with resource implications for Security, Human Resources, Accounts, Building Services, the Parliamentary Library, and indeed almost all departments of the Legislative Assembly and Joint Services.

Despite the extra resources required, Treasury has refused to provide supplementary funding to the Parliament.

As a result PSA members have placed an industrial ban on the issuing of network access to the temporary sitting day electorate staff of Members, and a ban on the provision of ITS support and training for these staff (at Parliament House or electorate offices) on sitting days.

The Campaign at Parliament House

At the meeting of 13 September, the PSA resolved to:

• Continue the current industrial bans in place within Food and Beverage Services, which bans PSA members from undertaking any work in the Member's dining room,
• Continue the bans in place within the library preventing any delivery of e-clips to Members of Parliament or their staff and library deliveries to Members' rooms.
• Continue the ban on room set-ups on sitting days and limited cleaning services.

• Ban on staff facilitation of interstate and overseas travel for committees, including accompanying delegations.
• Work to Rule (including the strict observation of the correct fire codes for fire doors).
• Ban on work created as a result of the staff freeze or redundancies where no agreement has been reached with the PSA.

Should you have any questions please feel free to contact:
Maria Cirillo, Industrial Officer, 9220 0975
Peter Krockenberger, Organiser, 9220 0986
Kate Walenkamp, Organiser, 0408 278 334

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