Pressure builds on Federal Government to make changes to SACS salary packaging

By ASU - the social and community services (SACS) industry union

As a result of the ASU campaign launched on 5 June 2008, Federal Ministers Jenny Macklin, Joe Ludwig and Wayne Swan have received hundreds of emails from workers affected by the changes that are being made to the way that income is calculated by Centrelink for the purpose of determining Family Assistance payments.

Many employers and peak organizations have also been contacting the Ministers describing the devastating effect this change will have on the social and community sector workforce who have been utilising salary packaging because of the Public Benevolent Institution (PBI) status of their employer.

This morning on the ABC radio program AM the Hon Jenny Macklin Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs said:

"We're only made aware of the impact on a wide range of people, particularly in the non-government sector fairly recently and I think they to have only come to be aware of this recently. So, we'll certainly ask the Department of Families, Housing, Community services, to look into the issue and to provide us with advice as to how we might address this issue."

We need to keep up the pressure on the Government to fix this issue before it is due to take effect on 1 July 2008.

If you have not sent an email to the Ministers please do so as soon as possible.

The ASU has organised a template email that you can use to express your concerns. Many people have amended the email to let the Ministers know exactly how they will be financially affected. You can access the email template here:

Click here to send an email to the Ministers

For more information on the changes and to see the correspondence the ASU has sent, see our previous article here: Urgent information on salary packaging and SACS workers.

To read the transcript of the ABC's AM program check out the following links:

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2276966.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2276897.htm