Public servants at the Financial Services Authority have overwhelmingly rejected a pay offer made in line with the Abbot government's hardline wage policies.
The 470 AFSA public servants voted by a landslide 82 per cent to reject a "complicated" wage offer of about 1.3 per cent per year that came with many cuts to conditions and entitlements to pay for the wage rises.
The ballot comes in the wake of bureaucrats in the Employment Department rejecting, by an overwhelming margin of 19-to-1 a pay offer of 1.4 per cent over three years.
The Australian Financial Services Authority's Chief Operating Officer Gavin McCosker told workers on Thursday morning that management and unions would be "back to the negotiating table" in 2015.
"A no vote means we go back to the negotiating table in 2015," Mr McCosker said in a message to workers.
"In the meantime, our current enterprise agreement stays in place."
The offer to AFSA's 470 staffers came with cuts to personal and carer's leave, redundancy provisions, flex-time, overtime entitlements and career progression arrangements.
CPSU union official Alistair Waters said he and his colleagues had mounted a "frenetic" campaign against the package after the offer was rushed out last week.
"Staff could see there was a lot more being taken away than was being offered," the union's deputy national secretary said.
Mr Waters said he believed the emphatic no-vote reflected the depth of feeling against the government's bargaining polices which bans any payrises that are not offset by cuts to conditions or entitlements.
"In my career that's the third or the fourth highest no-vote I've seen," the union official said.
"And it's not like AFSA is an industrially militant area, by any stretch of the imagination.
"Public sector staff see through a position from the government that requires them to give up an awful lot more than is being offered."
