Other wage information The Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes the Labour Price Index (LPI) which broadly measures annual changes in the price of labour in the Australian labour market. This is based on total hourly rates. The LPI for December 2010 to December 2011 increased 3.7% for all sectors: 3.2% for the public sector and 3.8% in the private sector (series 6345.0). Note the public sector includes States and Territories as well as Commonwealth public servants. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Trends in Federal Enterprise Bargaining Quarterly Reports provides average annualised wage increases (AAWIs) per employee. The September Quarter 2011 Report shows a 0.4% reduction in AAWI in all sectors from June to September 2011. The public sector AAWI increase for new agreements was 3.5% down from 3.9% in the previous quarter. APS classifications The APS Classification Rules 2000 (the Rules) establish the general classification arrangements. There are 11 APS Groups and two Training classifications within the Rules and all APS employees must be assigned a classification. In this report the only trainee data included in the results is for Graduates. There may be a number of specialist classifications within each Group. In some agencies, specialist classifications attract different salary rates which expand the salary range for the classification Group within which they sit. For example, both Medical Officer Classes 3 and 4 reside within Group 8. The remuneration data for specialist classifications is included in the relevant APS classification to which it corresponds. For example, the salaries for Medical Officer Classes 3 and 4 will be reported in the Executive Level 2 classification results.
5. Additional information The following section provides greater detail on a range of payments including motor vehicle related payments, performance bonuses, geographic and locality allowance and additional duties allowances. 5.1 Employment instrument An APS employee may have their terms and conditions set by the following primary employment instruments: enterprise agreements (EA); Australian Workplace Agreements (AWA); Public Service Act Determinations (s24(1) and (3)) (PSA); and common law arrangements (CLA). A secondary employment instrument, an individual flexibility arrangement (IFA), may be used to vary terms and conditions of the enterprise agreement subject to the employee being better off overall than they would have if no IFA were agreed to. Employees in the non-SES classifications are usually employed an EA with very small numbers at these levels using AWAs, PSAs and CLAs. At these levels, there is a greater use of IFAs than AWAs, PSAs and CLAs combined. IFAs were in place for 2678 employees in 2011, and were used most commonly at the EL 2 level: 1449 or 11.1% of EL 2 employees that are covered by an enterprise agreement. As shown in Table 5.1, the most commonly used primary employment instrument at the SES levels was a PSA. For non-SES, PSAs tended to deliver a lower median Base Salary compared to other employment instruments. Note that PSAs cover a small population and collective determinations are used as a short-term interim instrument during periods of structural change, such as machinery of government changes. At the non-SES classifications, the CLAs provided the highest median salary outcomes, but like AWAs, there was a very small population of the workforce using CLAs. At the SES 1 and SES 2 classifications CLAs delivered a slightly higher median Base Salary compared with other primary instruments while PSAs delivering the highest median Base Salary at the SES 3 classification by a small margin. This is shown in Table 5.3.