10 Collective bargaining in the Public Service has fallen significantly under the Employment Contracts Act. There are 43% of Public Service employees on individual employment contracts compared with 42% last year and 17% in 1995.
11 The data strongly suggest that employees who have joined the Public Service in the last five years are much more likely to be on individual contracts than the generation of public servants that preceded them. The following indicators support this conclusion:
- for all age groups up to age 65, the proportion of employees on individual contracts falls as age increases;
- the proportion on individual contracts tends to increase as salary levels increase, however this does not hold for people earning under $30,000 where many of the new entrants to the Public Service are likely to be found. Those earning less than $30,000 are evenly distributed between individual and collective contracts; and
- those with shorter tenure in each department are also more likely to be on individual contracts. Of staff who have been with their department for less than one year, 71% are on individual contracts. For each subsequent tenure group this proportion falls. Only 25% of staff who have been with their department for 10 years or more are on individual contracts.
12 Other trends include:
- 2,727 FTEs (9.4% of all staff) were covered by an expired collective contract, compared with 9,889 FTEs in 1999. This drop is largely due to the settlement of the collective contract in one large department; and
- fixed term contracts continue to be relatively infrequent in the Public Service (11.3% of all staff).
