Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThere are little things like email, you know, changes in Teams usage, and to the extent, Nick, sometimes it feels like a bit of a game to me. And I don\u2019t think this is a game. I think this is really serious,\u201d Marks said. \u201cAnd I think both sides need to say, you know what, the audience comes first and we need to stop playing games and focus on that and get to an outcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, the people that are suffering are our audiences. So, you know, if they want the audiences to suffer more, of course it\u2019s their right to take protected industrial action. That\u2019s their right and we should respect that. Respect, I think, is a really important thing when you get into these discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The strike action was the first at the broadcaster in 20 years, taken by members of the journalists\u2019 union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), and the non-journalists\u2019 Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), which represents staff in technology and control systems.<\/p>\n
The action forced ABC services across TV, radio and digital to broadcast from the BBC News channel and run repeats and pre-recorded local programs.<\/p>\n
ABC journalist Michael Slezak, co-chair of the MEAA ABC national house committee, said it was \u201cutterly offensive\u201d to suggest staff saw taking industrial action as a game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been at the table with management for nine months trying to reach an agreement that allows us to continue our work and deliver quality news and content to the audiences that we love,\u201d Slezak told the Guardian.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe claims that we have are all about creating a strong ABC with a bright future. The suggestion that ABC staff want to hurt audiences is beyond offensive. It\u2019s outrageous, and he should retract those comments immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
ABC staff have been protesting against what they say is a low pay offer that puts them behind inflation, unfair work conditions including the use of rolling and short-term contracts, and the broadcaster\u2019s refusal to rule out replacing journalists with artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
Unions argued that the offer of a 10% total pay rise over three years \u2013 3.5% in the first year and 3.25% in the second and third years \u2013 was too low and failed to address concerns about the staff appraisal process, career progression, night shift penalty rates and reproductive health leave. In January, Australia\u2019s annual inflation rate was 3.8%.<\/p>\n
Marks said staff costs were 60% of the ABC budget and any increase would mean job cuts. He denied the offer was below inflation because he said the last-minute offer of a $1,000 sweetener put staff ahead of inflation at 4.4%.<\/p>\n
Marks has strongly refuted claims that ABC jobs are insecure and claimed more than 90% were permanent and the average tenure of an employee was more than 10 years. Marks claimed on Thursday the request for pay increases from staff was \u201cunmanageable\u201d and that \u201coverindexing\u201d payments to staff would put the ABC \u201cin peril\u201d.<\/p>\n
Slezak, who is also president of the media section of MEAA, said Marks\u2019 claims about job security at the ABC showed \u201che\u2019s not listening to the staff\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we are saying is that you cannot do fearless journalism if you\u2019re fearing for your own job,\u201d Slezak said. \u201cThat is just not conducive to quality news. He needs to come to the table and address these major issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ABC has lodged an application with the Fair Work Commission for assistance to resolve the dispute. The first hearing at the commission is scheduled for Monday 30 March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ABC staff and union representatives have urged the managing director, Hugh Marks, to retract \u201cutterly offensive\u201d comments after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-564994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}