Your union, the Public Service Association of NSW (PSA), has formally notified an industrial dispute (Case Reference: Case C10020412) with the Department of Customer Service (DCS) and Revenue NSW management. This dispute was raised in response to the unilateral and unconsulted implementation of the “Moving into 26/27” directive issued on 1 July 2026, which introduced rigid daily caps on flexible working hours and restricted flex accrual to specific “bolded tasks.”
Urgent dispute meeting held
On Thursday, 30 July 2026, PSA representatives met formally with Department of Customer Service Industrial Relations and Revenue NSW management. During this meeting, the PSA raised the serious concerns of our members working at the Lithgow office.
We made our position clear: the DCS Flexible Working Hours Agreement 2024 is a legally binding collective agreement. It is not a set of unilateral guidelines that local management can rewrite or restrict at their whim.
Key concerns raised by the PSA
- Breach of consultation obligations: implementing these major structural variations to working hours “effective immediately” without prior notice or union consultation directly violates Clause 6 of the Service NSW Award 2024 and Clause 10 of the Conditions Award 2009.
- Unlawful daily caps: the imposition of 50-minute and 60-minute daily flex accrual caps and restricting flex to “bolded tasks” has no industrial basis under the DCS Flexible Working Hours Agreement 2024.
- Discriminatory impact: capping daily flex accrual disproportionately disadvantages part-time staff and working parents, mathematically preventing them from accumulating enough flex credit to access their contractually entitled 6 flex leave days per settlement period.
- Abolition of core time: the DCS Flexible Working Hours Agreement 2024 completely removed Core Time. Restricting productive work to a rigid 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM window is industrially baseless.
We want to hear from you: individual impacts needed
To ensure we can robustly counter management’s claims and provide granular detail to the department, we need to hear directly from you.
Please contact your PSA delegates or email us directly to outline the individual impacts these recent flex directives have had on your work/life balance, caring responsibilities, and daily routines. Specifically, we want to know:
- How the daily flex caps affect your ability to accumulate flex leave.
- Any WHS or fatigue issues caused by forced early lunch breaks (e.g., the 9:30am lunch break conflict).
- How these directives impact part-time arrangements or carer responsibilities.
How to contact the PSA
If you have feedback or individual impacts to report, please contact the PSA Member Support Centre by telephone or email and quote reference number C10020412:
You can also contact your specific PSA representatives directly:
Contacts
Cassandra Coleman PSA Central Councillor & Delegate
Next steps
The parties have agreed to meet again in approximately two weeks for further discussions. Your feedback is critical to strengthening our position before we return to the negotiating table.
In the meantime, the PSA advises all members to stand firm, continue recording their actual hours worked in MyWorkZone, and refuse to accept unilateral daily caps while this formal dispute is active.