The main public service union says a Coalition minister's claims about union fees paid by some of the lowest earners in the Commonwealth bureaucracy are "flat out wrong".
Human Services Minister Alan Tudge accused the Community and Public Sector Union of putting its own interests and those of the Labor Party above union members working at the giant Department of Human Services and of charging members on average wages $1000 a year in fees.
The minister's office has corrected the claim, saying the fee was more like $700, but the union says even the revised sum is a gross exaggeration
The union said Mr Tudge's comments were "misleading, inaccurate and insulting", pointing out that many of the staff resisting the government's industrial relations policies were not members of any union.
Mr Tudge is the third minister to preside over the dispute at the department since the election of the Abbott government in 2013 but has not previously had much to say about the industrial strife wracking his portfolio.
Public servants at Human Services have emphatically rejected three times workplace deals developed under the government's hardline Abbott-era public sector bargaining framework that the unions say contain big cuts to staff pay and conditions.
"Mr Tudge is flat out wrong to claim our union fees for these workers are $1,000 a year," CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood said.
"Our average DHS members pay close to half that amount and many part-timers a quarter of it. "
Mr Tudge says average public servants at the department, which runs Medicare, Centrelink and the Child Support Agency, are each more than $2000 worse off because of the union's resistance to the proposed workplace departments.
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"Due to the CPSU's ongoing campaign of drawn out negotiations and industrial action, the average public servant in the Department of Human Services has forfeited around $2000 in extra pay since 2015," the minister's statement read.
The minister spoke in the wake of a Fair Work Commission hearing in Canberra on Friday where the union agreed to call off a two-week period of industrial action at Human Services.
The department applied to have the action declared illegal under the Fair Work Act, arguing it was aimed against DHS's controversial "robo-debt" recovery program and not the ongoing industrial strife.
Mr Tudge said "the hearing ... showed once again that CPSU officials are taking advantage of their members for political purposes".
"Workers typically have part of their wages docked when they take industrial action," he said.
"For senior CPSU officials to tell their workers that they're striking over pay and conditions when actually it's about political point scoring for the Labor Party is disgraceful.
"It's clear that the union is acting in their own best interests and the best interests of the Labor Party – not the interests of their members."
But Ms Flood said the minister's comment were misleading, inaccurate and insulting.
"Mr Tudge's misleading and inaccurate comments are deeply offensive to hardworking DHS staff and demonstrate exactly why bargaining remains a mess and further strike action is on the cards," the union leader said.
"Over 20,000 DHS workers – unionised and not – have voted three times against these agreements, not because the CPSU has some magical power to get them to vote against their own interests, but because they know a dud deal when they see one.
"If minister Tudge thinks people on average wages in DHS can't understand a bargaining deal after three long years in dispute with this government, it's further proof that he is not across his portfolio."
Correction: An earlier version of this article quoted Human Services Minister Alan Tudge saying the average CPSU member working in his department paid $1000 a year in union fees. The actual figure is $700.
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