Frontline airport firefighters have joined the federal police in slamming public service bargaining structures which allow "agency heads' attempts to hide behind the Australian Public Sector bargaining statement" designed for desk workers, not first responders.
They say the "rigid bureaucratic employment policy designed for large [public service] departments" was at complete odds with their unique work requirements, shiftwork and challenges and called for a common-sense approach in negotiations.
As the airport firies struggled to meet international and domestic minimum safety standards for staff numbers, operational police, both in the ACT and federally, are beset with their own staffing shortfalls and a public service-imposed cap on future pay increases which leaves them languishing behind all the other states and territories.
Without a meaningful resolution to the pay dispute, the Australian Federal Police, of which some 730 sworn officers are contracted to police the ACT, now faces the certainty of losing trained, sworn officers to other jurisdictions where better pay and conditions, together with rich sign-on bonuses, are on offer.
Negotiations between the Australian Federal Police Association and AFP have now reached the protected industrial action stage - it's the first time this has happened in 23 years.
The United Firefighters Union Aviation secretary Wes Garrett and Australian Federal Police Association president Alex Caruana issued a joint statement on Monday in which they said their officers are assigned the highest risk, most specialised and security-sensitive jobs, so their pay and conditions should reflect it.
They say both the airport firies - who train to face the most catastrophic hydrocarbon-fuelled conflagrations imaginable - and operational police face risks which desk-bound, work-from-home Commonwealth public servants could never imagine - yet they are locked into bargaining like them.
The Commonwealth's aviation firefighters' agreement expired in February and all 26 items in their log of claims - including having their superannuation increased to 15.4 per cent to match that of administrative public servants - have been knocked back by Airservices Australia.
"Aside from providing that three-minute response to aviation-related incidents, our members respond to a whole range of incidents including motor vehicle accidents and hazardous materials incidents," Mr Garrett said.
"And during the Black Summer bushfires when the ACT urban firefighters were called out to those fire threats on Canberra's fringes, we backfilled them at the local fire stations."
The two associations said "well-paid senior bureaucrats ... are abusing a one-size-fits-all bargaining code designed for large departmental workplaces with an administrative focus".
"This has potentially serious ramifications for the safety of first responders and the public. Common sense says the agreement needs to be right for the job."
They said neither Airservices nor the AFP were participants in the process of landing the original PS agreement yet are "using the document to avoid negotiating on the needs of emergency responders."
