The latest blueprint for Australian Public Service reform would see a return to the bad old days of the boys' club, the main public sector union says.
The Community and Public Sector Union says the recommendations of the McPhee report, embraced by the Coalition on Thursday as the way forward, is ideologically driven and would hurt female public servants more than their male colleagues.
The idea of public service "jobs for life" would be consigned to the history books under the blueprint for reform, Unlocking potential – APS workforce contestability review, published on Thursday.
The report's author, Sandra McPhee, has called for a radical overhaul of the APS classification system, the merit regime, job security, and hiring and firing practices, arguing that many of these familiar features of public service working life belong in the past and are holding the service back.
But the CPSU came out firing after the Coalition government embraced the report's recommendations with the union's national secretary Nadine Flood saying Ms McPhee's proposed reforms to merit system would plunge the Australian Public Service back into the dark ages where patronage and bias was rampant.
"Among the most concerning suggestions are to water down safeguards to ensure workers are promoted on the basis of merit which would be a dangerous step back down the path towards the boys' club of the past in the management ranks, and totally at odds with Minister Michaelia Cash's announcement that the Government will work to reduce gender bias and inequality," Ms Flood said.
Job security was a key theme in Ms McPhee's report with the Fairfax board director advocating a system of "employer initiated separations" available to departments allowing them to dump workers when business conditions changed.
"Moving towards further outsourcing and allowing loyal and competent workers to be denied a permanent job for even longer than the three years currently allowed are also steps that would have a negative impact on the quality and reliability of public services, and on the lives of the people working to provide them. It's a lose-lose for the Australian community," Ms Flood said,
"The underlying bias behind this report seems to be an assumption that public sector workers believe they're entitled to a 'job for life'.
"Given that more than 18,000 jobs have been slashed by this Government, even Blind Freddy can see that's absolutely not the case."
