Employees of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority also agreed this week to a new enterprise agreement. „I encourage the parties still in negotiation to move forward pragmatically to conclude new agreements,“ Lloyd said. Department of Human Services employees this week ended their more than three-year-old collective dispute, in which 70 percent voted in favor of a new agreement. Nadine Flood, Secretary of State for KPdSU, said the DHS result was the government`s „categorical rejection of previous treaty proposals.“ „Of the 77.29% of voters who voted, 71.09% voted for the agreement.“ „The department has negotiated in good faith over the past three years to conclude a new agreement and we are pleased that our staff voted to adopt the proposed agreement,“ she said. „DHS management finally understood that maintaining rights and conditions in the workplace was the key to the settlement, and as a result, the CPSU was not against this agreement.“ Staff will receive a 3 per cent increase when the three-year contract comes into effect, with most current staffing rights maintained. „Agreements reached during the initial phase of the round of negotiations will expire by mid-2018. This means that the staff and agencies involved will consider negotiating the next enterprise agreement in the near future. „This new agreement is much better than the one that was rejected before, although it is still below what the hard-working employees of Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support earn, especially since there is no compensation without a pay increase for more than four years. A spokeswoman said the department would commit to the agreement being approved by the Fair Work Commission. The agreement ends a series of rolling strikes by DHS staff, but the government is not yet in favor of an enterprise agreement with agencies, including the Bureau of Meteorology and federal courts. Mr Lloyd said 123 new agreements had been reached in the current round of negotiations, while only 2.6% of Australian officials were in negotiations. Flood said the negotiation dispute has been tough for DHS officials, who have emerged from the Centrelink debt controversy amid job cuts and defaults.