You might be wondering what the hold up is with your CSS agreement.

We met yesterday with the Department and DPAC to try and get them to finally make some progress on getting your agreement finalised – but unfortunately, their tactics have forced things to a halt.

We’ve been working hard to try and draft the agreement (and the amendments to the AHP agreement), and for the most part, we’ve been able to make good headway on the things we agreed on in bargaining.

But now, DECYP are trying to sneak in what they call a ‘sunset clause’ which will undercut the conditions of CSOs who don’t have a formal qualification (or a qualification identified in the AHP agreement) – even though we never agreed to this in bargaining. You know as well as the Department do that people have been classified as AHPs in the CSS without any formal qualification (or without one of the listed AHP qualifications) for years – however seemingly overnight the Department have woken up and decided that this is a massive problem for them.

Our position is that it’s not your fault if they’ve employed you as an AHP, because they’re the ones that created this mess in the first place – and it’s certainly not fair that they’d make any worker’s conditions go backwards.

The sunset provisions would see an absurd situation where you’d still be paid as an AHP, but you’d lose access to a whole bunch of conditions like professional development, progression, and many other entitlements you’ve got now.

We’re never going to let that happen, and at the meeting we told them that.

The Department have said they’ll write to us urgently with an update on the draft agreement, and we’ll be in touch with you to tell you what it says as soon as we hear from them.

If there’s no change to their sneaky sunset provision, we’ll arrange membership meetings with you and your workmates so we can talk about what actions we can take to force them to come back to the table.

If you’ve got questions or need more information, please contact HACSUassist on 1300 880 032 or on assist@hacsu.org.au