Don’t bother checking your weather reports this week, friends. It’s all off. Cancelled. In the bin.
Industrial action being undertaken by the Bureau of Meteorology will shockingly force people across the nation to actually pop their heads outside to get a handle on what the weather’s like at any given point in time.
A long-running pay dispute is at the centre of this latest bout of strikes, with the three-year impasse between the Community and Public Sector Union and government higher-ups now causing workers to either walk-off the job, or undertake go-slow tactics in response.
All media requests directed at union-affiliated employees will not be granted, and the various BoM Twitter feeds will not be updated (except for severe weather warnings, should they occur). Internal action will also see phone calls and emails go unanswered as the strike more or less shuts down the Bureau.
CPSU deputy-president Beth Vincent-Pietsch had this to say on the matter:
“This is definitely a last resort for our members.”
“They’ve had massive restructures in the bureau and so many of these staff have had to relocate, their jobs have changed, there is so much job insecurity as they move to automating the services.”“Our members just want to be able to keep what they’ve got in terms of paying conditions, and just have a fair pay rise put on the table and I don’t that there is anyone that thinks that isn’t a reasonable ask.”
The government has not responded to the latest round of industrial action at this stage, with Minister for Employment Michaelia Cash remaining quiet on the matter.
However it’s strongly rumoured that the Federal Government will cancel all major weather events as a precautionary move until the dispute is settled.
Under the rumoured plan, the entire nation will remain at partly-cloudly and 17 degrees – the most boring, neutral, and uninteresting of weather – until the dispute is settled.
Once the strike is over and the Bureau returns to work, the Government would then switch the nation’s weather back on, and the seasonal cycles would be allowed to continue; the Bureau occasionally swinging the pendulum of extreme weather like the maniacal super-villains they truly are.
The strike action is expected to last around two weeks.
Source: ABC News.
Photo: Cassie Trotter/Getty.
