The Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) has launched a proposal to tackle decades of pay fragmentation across the Australian Public Service (APS).
Chief Negotiator for APS Bargaining at APSC, Peter Riordan said the approach would reduce current average fragmentation across APS1-EL2 classifications from 26 per cent to 18 per cent.
“Pay fragmentation that has emerged over decades affects employee attraction, retention and mobility,” Mr Riordan said.
“It will take time to address this,” he said.
“We’re confident this proposed approach takes an important and meaningful first step.”
Mr Riordan said the proposal defines a minimum base salary that Agencies must meet or exceed, with employees whose wages would be below the new minimum to receive an additional pay rise to address this, in addition to the APS-wide proposed pay offer.
He said the proposal would also set a base maximum salary for each classification.
“Salaries below the new base maximum will reach it over time through salary progression,” the Chief Negotiator said.
“The proposed approach is expected to benefit employees across 48 APS agencies.”
He said that under the proposed approach, no salaries would go backwards or be frozen, and Agency pay scales wouldn’t drop to the new base salary.
“It has been designed with long-term structural integrity to support salary progression, and to permit scalability over time to include more Agencies,” Mr Riordan said.
“The proposed approach to address pay fragmentation will be applied first, and the Commonwealth’s pay increase will be added on top of any salary structure changes.”
Under the proposed salary structure, the average increase across all APS classifications is 7.2 per cent, with APS6 employees to see the largest minimum and maximum salary increase of 10.3 per cent and 10.8 per cent respectively.
A table illustrating the proposed salary structure can be accessed at this PS News link.
