Australia's 160,000 federal public servants are facing an assault on their traditional 7.5-hour working day as the Coalition pursues its tough policies on pay and conditions.
The government has confirmed that departments have been given the go-ahead to demand longer working hours from their workers in return for annual pay rises in enterprise bargaining deals.
Unions are reporting that hours of work are being raised by an increasing number of departments and agencies as part of the service-wide bargaining talks, and that more time at their desks each week is a real possibility for many government employees.
The Abbott government has ruled that there will be no pay increases in the bureaucracy without "genuine productivity gains" and some departments are telling their workers that could mean working longer hours.
As the difficult process of negotiating 117 workplace agreements gets under way, working hours look to have been targeted by some agencies as an opportunity to prove they have extracted productivity gains.
The office of Public Service Minister Eric Abetz confirmed this week that departments were free to demand more working hours and the Public Service Commission said longer days could be exchanged for pay rises.
The Professionals Australia union said the move was a return to 1950s-style workplaces and that public servants were already working hundreds of hours in unpaid overtime to make sure their jobs were done as budgets and workforces dwindled.
Standard working hours are set by individual agencies and vary across the public service, but are usually between 36.75 and 37.5 hours a week.
National Employment Standards put the maximum full-time weekly hours at 38 plus reasonable additional hours.
But workers at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology were told this week their hours at work could be targeted as bosses sought increasingly elusive productivity gains.
"An example of a genuine productivity gain is an increase in the ordinary weekly hours of work," the bureau's deputy director, Vicki Middleton, wrote to her staff.
Senator Abetz's office said workplace agreements would be negotiated at agency level and confirmed the government approved of departments offering longer hours for pay increases.
"In certain circumstances, extra hours is one of a number of options available to agencies to achieve productivity offsets," a spokeswoman for the minister said.
Every deal struck between a department and its workforce has to be signed off by Senator Abetz under the government's bargaining policy.
The Public Service Commission, the agency co-ordinating the service's stance, was more detailed.
"The government's bargaining policy provides that agencies cannot reduce current hours of work," a spokeswoman said.
"There is nothing that prevents agencies from negotiating to increase hours ... having regard to the National Employment Standards, for example as a productivity offset for wage increases."
Professionals Australia public service organiser Dave Smith accused the government and public service chiefs of a "punch-clock mentality''.
"This is a double whammy," Mr Smith said.
"At the same time as jobs are being cut, employees are effectively looking at working an extra week every year.
"This is a 1950s approach that focuses on a 'punch clock' mentality rather than outputs.
"Its not a genuine productivity.
"Our members are already working hundreds of additional unpaid hours to cover existing science and engineering skills gaps."
