Crown Employees (Public Sector – Salaries 2004) Award

Central Council, 20 June 2005

Report adopted

The new Crown Employees (Public Sector - Salaries 2004) Award was made in February 2005 by the NSW Industrial Relations Commission.

The Full Bench gave us two weeks to make any corrections to the Award - especially to the 130+ salary schedules in Part B, Monetary Rates. The PSA and Public Employment Office made corrections based on our knowledge at the time. Since then, the Industrial Registry has prepared a settlement of minutes document. Because of the number of awards, agreements and determinations and the large number of agencies involved, both the PSA and PEO have found mistakes such as where a new classification has been added to an award, or where the rates were wrongly calculated, or where an award review has corrected the figures.

Structure and Content of Award: In contrast with the previous Crown Salaries Awards, the new 2004 Award is a much easier to use document. The previous awards listed the titles of the awards, agreements and determinations in Schedule A, but the salary schedules in Part B were organised more or less alphabetically by classification. For example, the approximate 500 classifications in the former General Staff Salaries Agreement were spread throughout Part B, rather than collected in one schedule.

During negotiations for the award in 2004, the PSA insisted that the salary schedules in Part B be arranged to reflect the salary rates and relevant allowances in each of the industrial instruments, in alphabetical order starting with awards, then agreements/determinations.

There were negotiations about which awards were to be included in the Salaries Award, which new determinations and agreements were relevant, which instruments were now obsolete and could be deleted, and a general updating of the titles of awards, agreements and determinations. The ongoing s19 Award Review process combined with the changes in the titles and composition of agencies produce constant changes to award titles. As well, reviews often identify discrepancies between what the agency is paying and the figures in the Crown Salaries Award that need to be sorted out by the PEO/Agency/PSA. New awards are created or variations made without advice to the staff preparing the Salaries Award.

Allowances: The PSA insisted from the beginning that the award should refer to increases in allowances that move by salary percentages and we added a new clause 4, Allowances. We included the Crown Employees (Public Service Conditions of Employment) Award 2002 in the list for the first time. In the course of our discussions about the settlement of minutes, the PSA had to argue strongly for the inclusion of the actual figures for the on-call, flying, first aid and community language allowances for the Conditions award, as the PEO had thought that this would be confusing (to whom we don't know).

The PSA wants an accurate, accessible, easy to use document for the benefit of our members, so that they can be confident that the Crown Employees (Public Sector - Salaries 2004) Award is correct as at the date it was made and is relevant to their employment.