The Defence Department will offer to boost its public servants' wages by a full 6 per cent in just 18 months in return for an end to three years of industrial stalemate.
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The department's top brass are hoping their 17,000 public servants, who haven't had a pay rise since 2013, will find the fast-tracked increases just too good to refuse.
Meantime at the troubled Department of Human Services peace seems further away for ever as public servants there prepare for prepare for another round of damaging strikes.
The main workplace union is warning of "significant disruption" to Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support Agency services from two weeks of strikes due to begin as the easter Holiday get underway.
Fairfax understands that Defence top brass is preparing a proposed enterprise agreement that will come with a 3 per cent pay rise up front, 2 per cent after 12 months another 1 per cent six months later.
Defence did not respond to questions on Wednesday and public service unions would not discuss the outcome of talks so far, so the department's plans to overcome the main sticking points in the dispute, conditions and entitlements, remain unclear.
The department has been in dispute with its civilian workforce since 2014 and proposals for new workplace deals have been defeated an unprecedented three times, most recently in December 2016.
News of the big front-loading offer at Defence comes as signs emerge that an end to another of the public service's long-running industrial disputes, at the Tax Office, might be in sight after one workplace union indicated it could be prepared to end its three-years of resistance and support a new deal currently under development.
But at the government's largest department, Human Services, the workplace strife continues unabated with workers gearing up for two weeks of rolling strikes beginning on Thursday, April 13.
The new action is the latest in a long line of industrial moves by the Community and Public Sector Union aimed at forcing a settlement to the long-running dispute with the union and department locked in an action at the Fair Work Commission which has so far done nothing to bring the sides closer ro a settlement.
CPSU National Secretary Nadine Flood said the new strikes would go further than previous actions.
"A full fortnight of strikes in Medicare, Centrelink and Child Support shows how frustrated these workers are," she said.
"We're talking about thousands of people with bills to pay, many of them part-time working mums on around $40,000 a year.
"They're doing it really tough because they've gone more than three years without a pay rise as this dispute has dragged on and on and on."
Ms Flood said she and her colleagues were frustrated by the attitude of Human Services' top bureaucrats to the dispute.
"Our team has worked tirelessly trying to negotiate through this mess with DHS management," the union leader said.
"Those talks are ongoing and are currently being overseen by the Fair Work Commission, but there's been no movement from DHS's bosses or in fact any sign whatsoever that they actually want to resolve this. DHS stands out as we make slow but steady progress at other Commonwealth agencies."
"These strikes are being held at a period of high demand for DHS services, and we do expect this will cause significant disruption to the department."
