It is now time for members to vote on the proposed new Flexible Working Hours Agreement (FWHA).

This is your chance to have your say.

For approximately 6 months now the PSA and Ombudsman have been in negotiation regarding a new FWHA for the agency. The previous FWHA is decades old and considered dated. In the early stages of the negotiations the employer gave serious consideration to the removal of Core Time and a largely extended Bandwidth in line with the agreement negotiated for the Department of Premier and Cabinet last year. The “lessons learnt” from the pandemic was the rational used by DPC.

The parties reassessed what had been agreed for DPC and the proposed document retains the Coretime and extends the latter part of the Bandwidth to 8.00 p.m. not 10.00 p.m.

The Settlement Period is for 12 weeks with 6 flex days being allowed per Period (or an average of one per fortnight).

The Principles for the document puts a strong emphasis on the “if not, why not” approach and proper communication between parties to enable flexibility, and recognise its importance.

We argued strongly for the retention of banking but, as has been common across most FWHA negotiations management have not been prepared to agree.

The previous agreement had a clause that removed credit hours at the end of each calendar year. This has rightly been removed from this document.

Several meetings of members have been coordinated to allow you to have input and for the PSA to advise of the pros and cons of the document. Whilst we believe the FWHA document to go to ballot is an improvement to the previous document we recognise Banking and overtime have been particularly contentious issues for our members. Management have indicated that if agreement is not reached clause 21 of the Crown Employees (Public Service Conditions of Employment) Reviewed Award 2009 will apply.

We urge you to compare the previous agreement with this draft and clause 21 of the Award (all of these are linked below).

Crown Employees (Public Service Conditions of Employment) Reviewed Award 2009

Colateral flexible working hours agreement

Proposed draft Flexible Working Hours Agreement 2022 20.07.2022

Be aware that only members have the right to vote in this ballot. The FWHA is an Award provision and the Parties to the Award are the Union and the Employer. Awards are developed through the hard work of your union representatives and the strong support you provide. That’s why you can vote. You can vote on this agreement HERE . This ballot will conclude COB Wednesday 10 August.