The CPSU has submitted our WHS inquiry report, calling for urgent safety intervention to help Passport Office workers.
Prolonged and extreme work related stress, customer aggression, chronic understaffing, inadequate training, and the rising backlog of work poses an immediate serious risk to workers health.
This situation is unacceptable and should never have happened. We’ve been working with management to resolve these matters and need to check back in to see how things are in your workplace - keep an eye out for an invitation to a workplace meeting.
Management have responded to our safety response plan on these key proposals.
- Improving communication, early identification of Health and Safety issues for resolution, and including workers in decisions affecting their health and safety.
- Adjusting the workload and work demand management, proactive health monitoring.
- Addressing customer aggression and threatening behaviour.
- Security controls, facilities and emergency response procedures.
- Implementing Safety Systems improvements to achieve a worker-centred Safe Work Demand policy and procedure.
Long-term improvements and solutions
We are taking action to alleviate the work related stress, better protect staff from customer aggression, ensure workers are properly trained to do their job and secure long-term improvements to working conditions – including more permanent jobs.
We want to see an Australian Public Service staffed by permanent staff with wages and conditions you can rely on, allowing you to plan for a future, apply for a home loan or take time off for a holiday. We will be campaigning to have permanent staff in the APO office as a longer strategy to help address the workload issues.