Flying O/S Over Easter? Expect Lines Out The Wazoo As Airport Strikes Hit

Planning to use the handy 4-day Easter Break for a quick little jaunt overseas? Get your shit together early, and get ready for the queue of a lifetime.

Wide-ranging public sector strikes are rolling out over the course of this week, as public servants and Government employees reach the breaking point of a long-running industrial dispute over frozen wages.
Today, workers from Medicare, Centrelink, the Bureau of Meteorology, the Tax Office, Defence, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Bureau of Statistics have all walked off the job today as part of a 24-hour stop-work action.
But it’s Thursday that’s expected to wield the biggest punch to the public, with Immigration, Border Protection, and Agriculture officials to vacate their posts at International Airport Terminals in the 24-hours leading up to Good Friday.
This action is expected to cause long, time-consuming lines for travellers departing, and arriving into, Australia on Thursday. As a result, it’s predicted that the customs and immigration clearance process time will blow out to multiple hours.
The action will continue over the course of the Easter school holidays, with all departments planning a series of rolling-stop work action in airports nationwide over the coming weeks.
The Community and Public Sector Union, the controlling workers’ body at the centre of the dispute, is putting pressure on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and Public Service portfolio-holder Michaelia Cash to end the two-year impasse over pay and workers rights, which the CPSU claims has seen some workers have Domestic Violence leave rights taken away from them, as union leader Nadine Flood explained:

“Two years into this dispute, these workers still face an attack on their family-friendly rights and other conditions of work. The extent of this mess is underlined by the fact that after two years more than eight out of 10 people working in the public sector still don’t have a new agreement.”

“Domestic Violence leave has been removed from some agreements like in the Prime Minister’s Department,” she said.
“We’ve also seen government refusing agencies permission to add domestic violence leave or any other improvements to agreements in dozens of agencies.”


So if you’ve got plans to jet off towards the end of the week, maybe bring a book and settle in for the long haul before you settle in for the long haul, ya feel?

Source: SMH.
Photo: Scott Barbour/Getty.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV