Greens Senator Barbara Pocock supports CPSU's claim of 20 per cent for APS pay

The Community and Public Sector Union made the "ambitious" 20 per cent pay claim in March, as bargaining commenced, before it was dismissed as "impossible" by Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher.

Senator Gallagher said the government wanted "reasonable, affordable pay rises" for the APS.

While the union has since remained quiet on the 20 per cent claim, nearly 13,000 members in May voted to reject the government's initial pay offer of 10.5 per cent.

The union is now polling members for their response to an offer of 11.2 per cent, a 0.7 percentage point increase, tabled by the Public Service Commission's chief negotiator Peter Riordan last week.

Mr Riordan has called it "fair and equitable", and representative of the highest pay offer for the APS in over 10 years.

Greens public sector spokesperson Barbara Pocock on Monday declared support for the union in the bargaining process.

"We must pay our public sector workers properly we must pay their wages in real terms and we must also improve their conditions of employment," Senator Pocock said.

"And that is why we support the CPSU in its bargaining at present."

The Greens senator, who sits on the committee currently probing the government's use of consultants, said the APS has "been hollowed out by a massive spend on private consultants".

"This means that the consultancy industry has prospered at great profit while our public sector workforce has been hollowed out and and suffered declines and conditions of employment," she said.

"We need a public sector that serves the public interest that understands and draws on the best of our talent out of our universities and our schools to create the responses we need to really big challenges coming down the pipeline at our country."

While Mr Riordan has said he does not expect any increases to the offer, the government needs the support of the CPSU to reach agreement on common pay and conditions.

The union has undertaken two rounds of industrial action in Services Australia over the course of bargaining, but has not scaled up to a full-day strike, a measure members in the agency have green-lit.

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The 11.2 per cent offer would be delivered as 4 per cent in 2024, 3.8 per cent in 2025 and 3.4 per cent in 2026. The first pay rise would not come into effect until March 2024.

The Public Service Commission has scheduled an additional bargaining meeting for September 28, intending to wrap up service-wide talks.

Common pay and conditions would not come into effect until individual agencies complete a second round of talks on agency-specific conditions, and staff vote on their enterprise agreements.

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