Government departments will try to persuade their public servants to accept pay deals almost identical to those they rejected last year.
The Employment Department, overseen by Public Service Minister Michaelia Cash, will begin a ballot on Friday with bosses hoping they can turn narrow losses in December and into victories in February and stop pay disputes rumbling on into a third year.
The department's public servants have twice rejected pay offers put in front of them in the long-running dispute, by a landslide in December 2014 and by a much closer 55 per cent 45 per cent margin a year later.
The minister said at the time that her public servants would not get a better offer than the 2 per cent a year they rejected and a departmental spokesman said on Monday that the proposal was the best one Employment could afford.
"The proposed enterprise agreement provides pay increases of 6 per cent over three years without trade-offs to entitlements," he said.
"The department believes this is the best possible offer it can make and further bargaining will only continue to delay its employees pay increase."
"Employees will vote on essentially the same proposed EA which is the best offer the department can make.
"However, there have been changes to the wording in sections of the proposed EA that make it clearer to staff that may have had concerns about certain entitlements.
"For example, the revised wording makes it absolutely clear there are no changes to entitlements such as the advancement arrangements for graduates and flexible working arrangements."
But Community and Public Sector Union national secretary Nadine Flood said the offer was the same as that rejected in December.
A vote in Ms Cash's own agency, the Department of Employment, will commence next week despite management making no changes to the offer that was rejected by staff last year", Ms Flood said.
The union leader said the vote currently underway of more than 30,000 public servants at Human Service currently was also destined to end in defeat for the wage proposal on offer.
"We're very confident that the mums and dads working in DHS will again vote to reject this diabolical deal, which is still proposing to strip any control these people have over where and when they work," Ms Flood said.
"DHS staff work in highly scheduled environments in call centres and customer service, so without these conditions many would be unable to properly manage their work and family responsibilities.
"Management should be following the family-friendly example set by the private sector and recognising that child-care and other family commitments can't be changed at the drop of a hat.
"It appears there is at least some recognition in management that this dud deal isn't going to be supported by DHS staff. That's why this ballot has been repeatedly delayed since last year."
