A major strike at Centrelink has left people fuming at the “broken” and “degrading” system as some report being placed on hold for over an hour – some left waiting for three months over payment claim advice.
Data released by the Australian Unemployed Workers Union (AUWU) has revealed on average people were being left on hold by Centrelink for 106 minutes this week alone.
Only 19 out of 119 attempts to reach an operator were successful.
The results come from a live tracker that has logged over a hundred users over the past two days following a 24-hour strike held by Services Australia staff on Monday.
One Indigenous user claimed on Wednesday they had not received any AbStudy financial assistance despite having their claim processed in August. Another alleged they were forced to walk into a physical Centrelink building after having hip surgery due to being hung up on by the agency’s phone line.
“I'm so sick of having to call in because the online service is a humiliating, degrading, experience that I hate so much,” one user, called Jane, reported on Wednesday.
Another person said, “They obviously need more employees, the whole process is made deliberately difficult.”
New union figures came after Services Australia staff walked off their jobs for 24-hours on Monday after rejecting a 11.2 per cent pay increase from the government.
Millions of welfare recipients were told work stoppages would have no impact on their payments.
AUWU officer Jeremy Poxon said since June daily complaints over blown out wait times and delayed payments have grown “progressively worse” due to a lack of urgency from the government to address workforce issues.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in a non-Covid period,” Mr Poxon said.
“Government is only able to get away with running a service this bad because users are the poor, marginalised and forgotten in our community.
“It’s a broken system.”
Services Australia general manager Hank Jongen said the average wait time for Centrelink calls on Monday and Tuesday this week was around 32 minutes.
“Unfortunately our wait times are longer than we’d like at the moment and we’re sorry some people are waiting longer than they should be,” Mr Jongen said.
“So far this year we’ve processed more than 2.5 million claims for Centrelink payments, and more than 340 million Medicare claims.
“We encourage anyone who needs to speak with us to try again – people are getting through, and our staff are working hard to answer.”
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