The pay dispute which last year led rangers to refuse to unlock entrance gates in Victoria’s national parks and state parks is effectively over.
The full bench of Fair Work Commission has granted a 4.5% pay rise back-dated to October, then 3% every March until 2016. The deal, which will affect more than 1000 employees of Parks Victoria. is more than the government had offered but less than the union had demanded.
Nonetheless, Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) Victorian secretary Karen Batt said the union was pleased.
“It’s been a long hard fight,” she said. “We think people who have been working in parks and support the park rangers, many of them out fighting fires as we speak, deserve the size of the pay rise ordered by Fair Work.”
The unions and the Victorian government had been negotiating a new enterprise agreement since October 2011.
As the dispute rumbled on parks staff mounted several strikes last year. Among the actions they undertook was to refuse to unlock national park gates during peak periods such as Easter and Australia Day. The government responded by deploying non-union staff and a contractor to open up access to popular parks.
With negotiations deadlocked, the situation was eventually referred to arbitration.
