Australian Border Force to call off their duties for 24 hours

Union members at the Immigration Department, including the Australian Border Force has decided to halt their work for 24 hours in a protest against a long-running industrial dispute.

As Border Force members have decided to walk off on 9^th of November, it would leave travellers stranded for hours in the entire country, giving rise to chaos. It is reported that almost 90,000 passengers pass through the Australian airports every day.

Agriculture department officials, who are also involved in a pay dispute, have decided to stop working on inspections and screening of international freight and parcels. Such a move has been undertaken by the Community and Public Sector Union to stop or hinder the “surge deployments” where they would make it difficult for the Immigration department from moving things through airports by the public servants across the country.

The union's national secretary, Nadine Flood, said that the travellers would be affected significantly and assured that front-line national security members would not be a part of this strike."It is disappointing that we have to do this and we do expect some significant impact for international passengers and business," the Canberra Times quoted Flood as saying.

Back in September, they had held another strike with calling off duties intermittently at different airports for each 2 hours. Meanwhile, Flood said that there was room to resolve the dispute and call off the strike despite wage talks being held for more than a year.

"We're ready to talk at any point about resolving this dispute. I will get on a plane anytime, anywhere to continue discussions with government," Flood added. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection hasn’t commented yet.

On Friday, WA Regional Commander of the Australian Border Force Rod O’Donnell said that this move of calling off duties has led to trust issues in the organisation. “We are very conscious of the fact that we need to be very collaborative, and co-operate ... to become a trusted global gateway. Particuarly that trust bit. As we all know, trust is not easily earned, it’s very easily lost, we recognise that,” he said, according to the Guardian.

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