A union for Australian Taxation Office staff will escalate a claim the agency has acted in bad faith in enterprise negotiations to the Fair Work Commission on Monday, with leadership infuriated by the ATO's response that it is all a misunderstanding.
The Australian Services Union, which represents 1100 tax office staff, issued a notice of concern to the agency last Tuesday, after a bargaining meeting in which it claimed the ATO sought to cut conditions from the enterprise agreement.
The dispute centres on a clause relating to performance management of staff. The union says a document presented in the meeting showed the tax office was trying to remove part of a two-step review process for employees judged to be underperforming.
Removing part of this process would mean employees progressed more rapidly to a formal assessment which could be used to terminate their employment, reduce their salary or transfer their duties.
The union claims the agency told them that an existing clause in the agreement (90.5), was the same as the first step in the clause currently under contention (91).
ATO's intention was to 'clarify' not 'remove': spokesperson
The tax office says it was not seeking to remove any clauses in the agreement, simply to clarify them.
"During the bargaining meeting on 12 September 2023, and in response to bargaining representative claims, the ATO presented a working draft for discussion of potential changes to clauses 90-92 of its current enterprise agreement," a spokesperson said.
"These clauses refer to the ATO's performance framework and are designed to assist employees achieve performance outcomes through collaboration.
"The presented clauses were a working draft only and by no means represented the ATO's final position or even a firm proposal in relation to these clauses.
"The ATO's intention was simply to clarify the existing processes, not to remove them."
Acting deputy commissioner Alison Stott communicated this in a letter to tax branch secretary Jeff Lapidos on Friday, responding to the notice of concerns.
But the response stoked fury within the union, with Mr Lapidos accusing the agency of lying about its intentions.
"We believe they were lying to us on the day," Mr Lapidos said.
"And they have been deceitful in terms of trying to cut conditions, despite their promises to the staff and the unions they wouldn't and they are pretending in their response that it has been the ASU that's misunderstood them. There is no misunderstanding, they were trying it on and it is not acceptable."
But the tax office spokesperson said it has "been consistently bargaining in good faith in line with its obligations under the Fair Work Act 2009 and will continue to do so".
"The ATO has received in excess of 400 claims from unions and bargaining representatives and is progressing negotiations in response to all of these claims," the spokesperson said.
"Once negotiations have concluded the ATO will provide detailed information on the proposed changes to the enterprise agreement, and this will then be put to eligible ATO staff to vote on."
The ASU will apply for a bargaining order from the Fair Work Commission on Monday.
If issued, it could set certain conditions on ATO bargaining representatives designed to maintain or promote good faith bargaining.
An enterprise agreement can't be voted in until a service-wide agreement on common pay and conditions is reached. Negotiations are still under way.
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