Last night the government made a new wage offer via this letter as a part of an attempt to finalise the public sector wages agreement negotiations.
      
Discussions around your public sector wages agreement continued with the government’s chief negotiator today.
      
We’d love to say we’re meeting almost daily to try and reach an agreement and negotiations are getting down to tin tacks… but we can’t.
      
We’ve only got together 3 times since the government’s announcement of an intensive negotiating process and, despite our continued requests, we keep having to wait for meetings.
      
We had been led to believe the bureaucrats we’d be meeting with would have broad parameters within which to negotiate, but they don’t, nor do they seem to think the issues we’ve put on the table are serious matters that we really want to address for you.
      
We want to discuss all the claims you’ve made, and we want to reach an agreement, but we constantly get responses that are neither yes nor no – so we get no closer to reaching an agreement at all.
      
We could lead you to believe that all the past few weeks has been about is settling things down to avoid any possible industrial action for a couple of weeks so the Premier and the Head of the State Service could have holidays... but we're not that cynical, are we? We do hope they had a lovely break.
      
This all really is a total disgrace. As we’ve said before, these are the most bizarre and incompetent wage negotiations we’ve ever witnessed!
      
Unlike those who pretend to care, and who send you updates that in no way really reflect what’s really happening in the negotiating room, we’ll keep trying to get an agreement that genuinely improves your life and your workplace.
      
Keep your eye out for member meetings in your area over the next few weeks.
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