Coronavirus crisis: ABC staff vote for pay rise after being urged to follow public service pay freeze

ABC staff have defied calls to follow the lead of other public sector workers and have voted in favour of taking an immediate pay rise. Communications Minister Paul Fletcher had urged ABC staff to follow a public service pay freeze because of the coronavirus pandemic and not take their scheduled two per cent pay increase. ABC chair Ita Buttrose offered ABC staffers the chance to vote on deferring the raise for six months to April 1. She said the $5 million saving would go instead to fund emergency broadcasting. In her letter to staff she pointed out that Managing Director David Anderson had already declined a pay rise and all members of the ABC Board had agreed to a 10 per cent reduction in fees. But ABC staff instead voted to pocket the cash immediately. In a memo to all staff on Wednesday ABC Chief People Officer Rebekah Donaldson wrote: “We now have the result of that process and staff have voted against deferring the 2 per cent increase for all eligible employees, an increase agreed and signed off by the Fair Work Commission last January. “This increase will be included in the next pay cycle.” The move was immediately condemned. Evan Mulholland, Director of Communications at free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs said it showed ABC staffers were cut off from the rest of Australia. “This is further proof that the ABC, despite their insistence to the contrary, are not a part of Australia’s cultural fabric but are completely removed from mainstream Australia,” he said. “Staff members at our national broadcaster now consider themselves morally superior and more worthy of a 2 per cent pay rise than staff at Services Australia, Centrelink, the Department of Health and the Department of Social Services, who have all been on the front line of the response to this pandemic, and have all taken a six month pay freeze.” Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said: “At a time when over a million Australians have lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 downturn, employees in the Australian Public Service face a pay freeze, and many other media organisations have implemented pay cuts or extensive job cuts, the government considered it appropriate that ABC employees should also have a temporary pay freeze; indeed, we felt it would have been a fine gesture of solidarity with those across the media sector who have been doing it much tougher than the ABC. “It is evident from the results of today’s vote that ABC staff did not share this view.”