Members,

In 2011, the Government, at the stroke of a pen, unilaterally changed rights around redeployment and redundancy pay for public servants. The PSA has repeatedly fought against this radical change and last week had a ground-breaking win in the Court of Appeal which will benefit all PSA members working in the public service.

This win came about as a result of the PSA’s application in 2012 to have a redundancy clause inserted in the School Administrative and Support Staff Award. The Government successfully challenged our application in the Industrial Relations Commission by using its Industrial Relations Act, Regulation 6(1)(f).

The PSA appealed the decision of the full bench of the Industrial Relations Commission which led to our most recent victory last week.

This is a win for all members working in the public service as the Court of Appeal declared that the O’Farrell Government’s regulation that stops the right of public servants to have negotiated or arbitrated enforceable rights around redundancy was invalid.

The effect of this decision for members is that the Industrial Relations Commission is no longer restricted on including redundancy provisions in an Award for public sector employees.

This is a very important victory for which the PSA has again led the way for all other public sector unions.

The PSA will immediately move to vary all relevant Awards in order to ensure that your redundancy rights are protected in your Awards and Agreements.

The PSA calls on the NSW Government as your employer to respect this decision rather than appeal to the High Court.