The government's workplace enforcer the Public Service Commission, has been asked to attend the conciliation sessions but Employment Minister Michaelia Cash has escaped the indignity of being ordered to the bargaining table by the industrial umpire.

The Fair Work Commission suggested the compromise conciliation outcome after the Community and Public Sector Union applied to FWC asking it name Senator Cash as a bargaining agent, which would have forced the minister to send representatives to talks between each of the agencies and the union.

Senator Cash has consistently said she is not a bargaining agent and that enterprise agreement talks were conducted at agency level while departmental bosses have maintained they were bound by the terms of the government's bargaining policy.

Now, the Department of Human Services, the Australian Taxation Office, Defence, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Environment and Energy, Agriculture, the Bureau of Meteorology, IP Australia, the National Disability Insurance Agency and the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency will all have to sit down with union reps under the auspices of the Fair Work Commission.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection was also included in the action but its dispute was sent to compulsory arbitration by the Fair Work Commission last week.

Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd, who has been enforcing the tough bargaining policy on behalf of Senator Cash, was asked by the FWC to send representatives to the conciliation sessions, despite government lawyers arguing in the commission that the APSC did not need to be present.

The APSC did not respond, before deadline on Wednesday, to requests for comment and Senator Cash's office has also been approached for comment.

The conciliation sessions will begin in less than two weeks at the giant Department of Human Services, one of the departments where the dispute, which has raged since 2013, is at its most bitter.

The atmosphere at DHS has become so heated during the dispute that at one point an employee was accused of a death threat against a leader of the department's bargaining team.

The union's National Secretary Nadine Flood said Fair Work's move put further pressure on the government's position.

"Coming hot on the heels of the Government's failure to stop DIBP bargaining going to arbitration, this latest move puts even more pressure on Minister Cash and the Government over their failed approach to Commonwealth bargaining," Ms Flood said.

"As a result of the action we took, APSC representatives have now been asked by Fair Work to participate directly in bargaining for the first time given the limits of what agencies are allowed to do under Government policy.

"This is an opportunity for the Minister to consider changing the Commonwealth's approach and allow her proxies in the APSC to engage positively and help find a way through this three year bargaining mess, rather than the 'block at all costs' approach we've seen in Fair Work to date."