The weathermen and women at the Bureau of Meteorology look set to take their pay dispute to the nation's airwaves, reading out protest messages during radio weather forecasts.
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The public escalation will be put to the vote of the bureau's public servants after its union secured consent on Monday from the Fair Work Commission to hold the ballot.
Bureau staff also want to be able to impose a social media blackout and to refuse to answer media inquiries about non-severe weather as they vent their frustration at the lack of progress on a new wage deal.
The news comes as the Australian Public Service workplace authority confirmed there had been no backdown on the government's demand for "productivity" improvements from its 160,000-strong workforce, which is in part fuelling the industrial unrest spreading across the service.
Members of the Community and Public Sector Union at BoM look set to vote for the actions which will also include work bans of up to 24 hours, a refusal to post on the bureau's Twitter feed and a ban on answering all non-essential media inquiries about the weather.
The threat of taking their protest live onto the airways would add a new element to the public service industrial strife with 11 agencies and departments, covering more than half of the Commonwealth bureaucracy, now either taking action or on the brink of action.
Forecasters from the bureau appear daily on the ABC's network or local, regional and metropolitan stations, as well as some commercial broadcasters, to talk to announcers about upcoming weather forecasters.
It is unclear how the ABC's bosses would react to the move, with a spokesman for the national broadcaster declining to comment on Tuesday.
Dozens of technicians who work on the bureau's network of weather stations around Australia are also set to walk off the job after they, too, lost patience with the lack of an offer on wages and conditions.
The members of the Electrical Trades Union have secured permission for a protected action ballot, with the union predicting that the technicians will vote for stoppages.
Two other unions, the AMWU and Professionals Australia, are also talking about taking their members at the BoM off the job.
The enterprise agreement covering the bureau's 1700 workers expired nine months ago and they have had no pay rise since June 2013.
The CPSU's National Secretary, Nadine Flood, said the bureau's work was important to all the community and the BoM's public servants would not take action lightly.
"BoM staff love the work they do and they know that the service they provide is really important to all of the community," she said.
"They are vital to the community so it's a shame that this government doesn't' recognise that.
"Staff are really frustrated that after almost a year of bargaining they still don't have a concrete offer.
"They know from what's happening in other agencies that the government is giving them less say at work and making it easier to cut jobs.
"Understandably they are not going to take this lying down."
Meantime a spokeswoman for the Australian Public Service Commission denied union reports last week there had been a softening of the bargaining stance on "productivity offsets".
"Genuine productivity gains are demonstrable, permanent improvements in the efficiency, effectiveness and or output of employees, based on reform of work practices or conditions, resulting in measurable savings," she said.
"This has not changed."
