Public servants at the Department of Immigration and Border Protection have crushed a proposed new workplace deal by a margin of more than four-to-one.
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The 82 per cent no vote, a 1 per cent increase on the margin of rejection in the department's previous ballot, comes as another 36,000 public servants begin voting on Monday morning in another high-stakes workplace poll.
The defeat of the proposal at the Immigration Department means the dispute there, which is in its third year, will now go to compulsory arbitration at the Fair Work Commission, an outcome the department's management and their political bosses were desperate to avoid.
Departmental Secretary Mike Pezzullo says arbitration will be slow, deliver an uncertain outcome and take control out of employees' hands but the main workplace union, the CPSU, says the DIBP workers have seen through a "bad deal".
Proposed agreements, developed under the Coalition's controversial public sector bargaining framework have now been rejected by Immigration and Border Force three times, with a no vote of more than 90 per cent in September 2015, 82 per cent in March and now 81 per cent.
The policy generated controversy this month after the ABC agreed a deal with its 5000 employees that was well outside the rules of the framework sparking fury from Turnbull government ministers who appear powerless to stop the agreement going ahead.
Mr Pezzullo and Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg told their 13500 workers of the outcome on Monday morning.
"This means that the Fair Work Commission will now determine your pay and conditions," Mr Pezzullo and Mr Quaedvlieg wrote.
"This determination will be final and binding, you do not get a chance to vote on it.
"Arbitration may be a lengthy process.
"In the interim, we will continue to operate under the existing terms and conditions provided under the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Enterprise Agreement 2011-14."
CPSU National Secretary Nadine Flood said the vote was a rejection of unfairness.
"This is an emphatic rejection of the fundamentally unfair and unreasonable deal being pushed by Immigration and Border Force's bosses and the Turnbull government.
"Nearly 10,000 people voted No because they know a bad deal when they see one. This offer would have hurt them, their families and their colleagues."
"The hardship that has been pushed on DIBP workers throughout this three-year dispute, and their unwavering rejection of that approach, underlines why the upcoming Senate inquiry needs to look at the bargaining mess across the Commonwealth public sector."
The union leader called again on Public Service Minister Michaelia Cash and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to reconsider the government's public sector bargaining policy.
"This DIBP result is a strong dose of reality for Prime Minister Turnbull and Minister Michaelia Cash. Public sector bargaining is a problem that isn't just going to go away," Ms Flood said.
"Only a few weeks ago Commonwealth lawyers made the ridiculous and dishonest argument in the Commission that Fair Work should not step in and arbitrate DIBP bargaining because the latest offer would be accepted by staff."
