The new union ad was launched on Sunday, the same day the Government started screening its new TV ads.

The union ad includes the following advice:

ACTOR: I work for the department responsible for the Government's new work laws. Now the Government's spending millions telling you that you'll be protected and that you'll have choice. Don't believe them. In here, if you don't sign a contract you don't get the job.

The ACTU estimates that each screening of a 90 second Federal Government ad costs around $90,000 and that around $12 million of taxpayers' money will go up in smoke in just the next few weeks of the Govenrnment's advertising campaign.

As one commentator said, the Government's ad campaign is not so much a 'blitz', but 'carpet bombing'.

ACTU Secretary Greg Combet discussed the new union ad on ABC TV's Insiders program, saying:

"We've spoken to a lot of members of the public service, the Commonwealth public service, including in the Department of Workplace Relations and, of course, the policy of the Government in there, and in the PM's department too, is that you can't get a job unless you sign an individual contract. And they discriminated against people for 12 months in the bargaining process; employees who wanted to collectively bargain in Kevin Andrew's department kept only employing people and giving people permanent employment - for those on short-term contracts - only on the terms that you would sign an individual contract. So that's the policy and that's the thing that will underpin the entire industrial relations changes. To call it Work Choice is the greatest farce.

"What underpins all of this industrial relations package is the aim, as stated quite boldly by Peter Costello earlier in the year, to get people onto an individual contract. And by doing that you give the business community the power to unilaterally determine people's pay and employment conditions. Because individual people don't have equal bargaining power with a government or a mining company or even a small business. And that's what flexibility is for this Government and as I said earlier, to call this "work choices" really is so farcical because the choice all sits with the employer under this system, not the employee."

View New Union Ad - Department Worker