Thousands of public servants at the Environment Department are preparing to walk off the job as they try to force their bosses to make them a pay offer.
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Unions say the 2600 workers at Environment have lost patience with their department, which is flagging deep cuts to conditions and entitlements without putting a pay offer on the table.
The application to the Fair Work Commission for consent for a protected action ballots means departments employing nearly 90,000 public are now facing industrial action, with staffers saying they are being asked to take effective pay cuts but work longer hours and lose hard-won conditions and entitlements.
If they vote to strike, the Environment officials will join colleagues eight agencies or departments who are either planning or actively engaging in industrial action.
The Environment Department's enterprise agreement expired in June 2014 but management have still been unable to get a wage proposal to the table, although they have warned of some of the "productivity offsets" that will be expected.
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Staff in the department's Antarctic Division face the loss of allowances paid for their time on remote bases, which their union, the CPSU, says makes up much of the workers' pay.
Remote housing allowances for national parks workers are also understood to be among the conditions facing the axe with the ill-feeling compounded by job cuts which are expected to see one-four of Environment's full-timers shown the door by 2017.
The government is now facing widespread industrial action in the Australian Public Service as bureaucrats reject deals offered to them under Employment Minister Eric Abetz's tough public sector bargaining guidelines.
Public Servants at the departments of Human Services, which runs Centrelink and Medicare, Veterans' Affairs, Employment, Agriculture, the Tax Office, Defence and the Australian Institute of Criminology are either planning or taking industrial action.
Scientists and researchers at the CSIRO, which sits outside the APS but is still subject to the bargaining guidelines, have also begun the process for strike action.
Low-level action at the giant Human Services department has been under way since late 2014, including a co-ordinated lunchbreak last month, but department managers say the actions have so far left them unmoved and caused little disruption.
Community and Public Sector Union deputy secretary Beth Vincent-Pietsch said staff at Environment were expecting cuts but deserved to be told what was being planned for their pay.
"Staff only have half the picture," the union official said.
"Despite months of bargaining they don't know what kind of pay rise to expect, only what they are being asked to give up to pay for it.
"They know that provisions around flexible working arrangements and the protection of the employer's superannuation contribution will be stripped out of the agreement, along with 15 other items."
Ms Vincent Pietsch accused the department of "stringing staff along for months".
"Taking industrial action is a last resort but staff have been waiting for almost a year to find out what their new agreement will look like and all they've been getting from the Department is delays."
If endorsed by a vote of union members, the industrial action in Environment might include a range of work bans and stoppages of up to 24 hours and begin by the middle of next month.
The Environment Department did not respond to questions before deadline on Tuesday.
