Public servants at Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support will start an "open-ended" campaign of strikes to force an end to their marathon industrial dispute with the Department of Human Services.
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The CPSU told the department in a notice sent on Wednesday that rolling strikes will begin on March 17 and has warned that no end date was planned to the industrial action.
"We're looking for some breakthrough. The end game is we're trying to get some sort of agreement," a spokesman said.
The union has threatened "significant" further action if the department did not move towards "a fair and reasonable settlement".
Workers were resorting to strikes after talks aimed at resolving the enterprise bargaining dispute with the DHS failed to break the impasse, the CPSU said.
Strikes will start after industrial action planned by Centrelink public servants around Australia in February was cancelled after their employer and union agreed to more talks.
The agreement was reached as the two sides met at the Fair Work Commission in Canberra to hear an attempt by the DHS to have the strikes by workers at Centrelink, Medicare and the Child Support Agency ruled illegal.
The department said the planned strike was at least in part a protest against the policies that have led to the ongoing "robo-debt" debacle, which would make the action illegal under the Fair Work Act - a claim the CPSU rejected.
CPSU National Secretary Nadine Flood said it was making progress with other agencies still without new agreements, but none with the DHS in the dispute over pay and conditions.
"We've negotiated in good faith with DHS over several weeks, with the assistance of the Fair Work Commission, but unfortunately the department hasn't moved on the key outstanding issues that are so important to our members," she said.
"What's being pushed by DHS bosses still strips away essential rights and conditions, particularly the family-friendly rights that allow a mum to balance her work with caring for her family."
Staff at Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support will target their strike action at times they believed would have greatest impact, the union spokesman said.
However the CPSU was taking steps to minimise the effect on Centrelink customers affected by the ongoing "robo-debt" debacle, a spokesman said.
The welfare agency has been embroiled in controversy since late 2016 over its pursuit of "debts" raised by an error-prone automated data-matching system.
But the "robo-debt" controversy has played out against a background of the industrial dispute at the department which has raged since 2014, as workers resist a push to impose a hardline Abbott government industrial relations policy.
