More Canberra public servants have voted to strike over their ongoing pay and conditions battle, defying a "dire" warning from their boss that industrial action might prove fatal.
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Meantime the Agriculture Department's 4500 public servants will soon be voting on a wage offer of 1.5 per cent with cuts to leave entitlements and the axing of a $300 health and well-being allowance.
Another enterprise agreement offered under the government's tough bargaining guidelines has been knocked back with most of the scientists and researchers working at the Australian Synchrotron voting against a 1.5 per cent deal.
Public servants at Murray Darling-Basin Authority have voted to strike joining, their counterparts at copyright agency IP Australia who voted last week to go out.
The vote at the MDBA, among members of technical union Professionals Australia, came despite senior authority executive Jo Schumann telling the Fair Work Commission last month that people might die as a result of the public servants' industrial action.
The MDBA has since made an enterprise agreement offer containing pay rises of 4.2 per cent over 3 years, which is likely to go to an all-staff ballot this month, so it is unclear if industrial action will materialise at the agency.
Nine enterprise agreements, negotiated under the tough bargaining rules, have now been voted up in the public sector and public service minister Eric Abetz has been urging the vast majority of public servants, who are still locked in stalemate, to follow suit.
But at Agriculture, the Community and Public Sector Union is campaigning for a no-vote on an enterprise agreement offer that the union says contains "cuts, cuts and more cuts."
According to the CPSU, workers will lose their health allowance, face a tougher time accessing personal and other leave, have penalty rates cut and lose time off in lieu and other entitlements.
Union official Leigh Hughes says the loss of conditions and entitlements were likely to be a huge obstacle to getting a deal done at Agriculture.
"Our members have consistently told us that keeping conditions are a priority for them, and a pay offer that is lower than projected inflation is not going to change their minds," Mr Hughes told his members in a bulletin.
"It is now more than a year since the current agreement was meant to have been replaced, and two years since the last pay rise."
At the Australian Synchrotron, a research station in Melbourne's suburbs where scientists experiment with high speed electrons, 92 of the 131 workers have voted to strike.
Their union Professionals Australia says action might impact some of the high-tech research, including work on Alzheimers disease.
Union official Dave Smith said the federal government should support the work of the Synchrotron with an acceptable wage deal for the workers there.
"The Synchrotron is a world class research institution with staff enabling cutting edge research in medical science, defence, manufacturing, environmental technologies and food science technology," Mr Smith said.
"If this government is serious about science and innovation then it needs to properly support the Synchrotron and treat their world-class employees with respect and fairness."
