Public servants at Canberra's National Capital Authority are facing their fifth Christmas without a pay rise after a bungled enterprise bargaining process was scrapped because of technical errors.
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The Community and Public Sector Union has called for authority staff to be compensated after a required notice of employee rights was mistakenly issued on official letterhead and wrongly included information in breach of industrial relations regulations.
Authority bosses had expected changes to industrial relations laws by federal Parliament would resolve the issue, but acknowledged the legislation would not be passed until at least November and the process should be restarted.
Parliamentary support for the bill is unclear.
In May, 54 per cent of staff at the planning authority voted to accept the proposed pay deal, with 80 per cent taking part in the vote, before the technical error was brought to light.
In an email to staff last week, acting authority boss Andrew Smith acknowledged there was no clear path for resolution of the problem and he was opting to return to stage one to resolve the problem.
The key element of the blocked legislation would allow the Fair Work Commission to overlook minor procedural or technical errors when approving enterprise agreements - provided the errors would not have disadvantaged employees, including errors related to requirements for a notice of employee representational rights.
"After due consideration, I believe the balance of risks, including inordinate delay, now support withdrawing our current application from the Fair Work Commission and re-starting the enterprise agreement bargaining process," Mr Smith told staff via email.
"In this regard, I have just sent a notice of employee representational rights (NERR) to all staff which re-starts enterprise agreement bargaining in the NCA."
Community and Public Sector Union deputy secretary Beth Vincent-Pietsch said the mistake showed incompetence on the part of National Capital Authority bosses.
A similar procedural problem at the National Film and Sound Archive was quickly rectified and the agreement settled earlier this year.
"This is a disgracefully unfair outcome for National Capital Authority staff," Ms Vincent-Pietsch said.
"NCA management waited years to even make an offer to staff. We warned them about their error that led to this mess but were ignored.
"To make matters ever worse, management have sat on their hands for five long months when they should have been acting decisively to fix this situation."
She said the scrapped deal was "far from good for authority staff", but had received support in order for them to secure a pay rise.
"NCA staff should not be disadvantaged any further by this debacle. We'll be arguing forcefully when we return to the bargaining table that staff should be financially compensated for this mess.
"This situation has caused considerable damage to the trust between staff at NCA and their bosses."
Acting authority boss Andrew Smith issued a short statement after questions from Fairfax Media.
"After due consideration, the NCA has withdrawn its current application for an enterprise agreement from the Fair Work Commission and has re-started the enterprise agreement bargaining process," he said.
