It's time to go, Peter Part One - depaNews September 2006

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Published: Tuesday, 28 June 2011 13:51

It's time to go Peter

How long is too long? When the Local Government Superannuation Scheme was established in July 1997, members of the Working Party (including the depa Secretary) agreed that the Chair of the Board would rotate every four years between the employer and employee representatives. This is a normal arrangement on superannuation boards where half the members represent the contributors and half represent the employers.

Famous local government identity and then a councilor, Peter Woods was the inaugural Chair. Woods was the President of the LGA at the time - a position under the LGA Constitution with a limited term of two years but a position that Woods continued to occupy for twelve.

In 2001 the depa Secretary Ian Robertson and the LGEA’s Martin O’Connell raised the four-year term and the need to give the employee reps their turn. For a variety of reasons, the USU made an agreement with Peter Woods that he would be supported in the role as Chair for as long as Brian Harris was the General Secretary of the USU. Then it would be time to hand over to a representative of the employees. Fair’s fair.

Brian Harris retired from that position this week but the LGSS Board has been unable to dislodge Woods from the position of Chair.

Superannuation Boards require a three-quarter vote to be a majority and while in recent meetings there have been plenty of four all votes calling for him to stand down and to introduce an orderly transition to an employee representative, Woods remains there - refusing to debate the matter and trying to secure the extension of time.

Woods has been Chair for more than nine years. The position should be rotated, as all other industry and government superannuation funds operate, between the representatives of the employees and the reset representatives of the employers. Woods intransigence is unacceptable.

At the LGSS Board meeting on 27 September, the Board welcomed Brian Harris as a new USU representative but even having Brian there, to remind Woods of the deal and the need now to stand down, could not dislodge him.

The only thing more patronising and offensive than Woods’ refusal to stand down (supported by the other employer representatives on the Board - Blacktown Mayor Leo Kelly, Hurstville Councillor Beverly Giegerl and Shires Association Patron John Wearne) is the assertion they know better than us about the attitudes of our members.

We think they are wrong but we would like to know what you do think. You can use this link http://app.intellicontact.com/icp/sub/survey/start?sid=3486&cid=37499 now to express a view about whether Peter Woods, consistent with the principal of the Divine Right of Kings and can stay there as long as he damn well pleases. Or you can vote that you think it's time he moved on and gave the employee representatives their rightful turn. A transition that should have happened in 2001 and is now grossly and ludicrously overdue.

Use the link and tell us whether Woods can stay for life or whether proper governance requires a smooth transition and a fair rotation between the employee and employer representatives.

Finally, because when we tell members about this they do wonder what those on the Board get paid, the employee reps have it paid to their unions and don’t accept it personally but the employer representatives accept it as income.

Is this the right room for an argument? - depaNews May 2011

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Published: Tuesday, 28 June 2011 13:45

Here we go again at Taree.

We are in dispute again with Greater Taree City Council.

As a result of a restructure some time ago, the Council has de-skilled and removed authority from a member who was formerly a Manager and is now a team leader. He accepted the position of team leader on assurances by the Council would be virtually indistinguishable and that this would be revealed when the position description was developed. The Council has refused, despite monthly requests, to prepare the position description.

We were able to identify 18 separate responsibilities lost in the change (and that's counting the loss of all delegations only as one factor) in addition to the council's failure to honour their undertaking to prepare a position description but the council would still not agree to make the aggrieved employee redundant.

So, we filed a dispute and, for good measure, added to it two other issues that we were struggling to settle. One was an issue about an employee's right to a free commuter car arising from a letter of appointment which said she had that as an entitlement and the other was a failure of the Council to comply with the rules of their salary system when the salary system allowed two step increases but management simply decided that they didn't want to do that anymore.

The dispute was heard by Commissioner Stanton in the Industrial Relations Commission on 4 May and the Council denied everything. It was like living in Monty Python's famous Argument Sketch:

depa: I came here for a good argument.

Council: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.

depa: An argument isn't just contradiction.

Council: It can be.

depa: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.

Council: No it isn't.

depa: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.

Council: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.

depa: Yes, but that's not just saying “No it isn't”!

Council: Yes it is!

depa: No it isn't!

Council: Yes it is!

depa: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.

(Short pause)

Council: No it isn't.

The argument/contradiction is set down for conciliation in the Commission in Taree on 30 June. We hope for something more constructive from the Council that day.

BPB kills off B1 & B2 - depaNews July 2009

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Published: Tuesday, 28 June 2011 13:51

Shock horror: BPB kills off B1 and B2

It wasn't us, but apparently sufficient people complained to the BPB about there being different letters of the alphabet to denote accreditation levels for private certifiers and council employees, for them to do something about it in version 2 currently being canvassed in the industry. The BPB had proposed B1, B2 and B3 as designations for local government employees doing "certifying" while private certifiers operate as A1, A2 and A3.

So, B1 and B2 are dead.

Clearly we underestimated how offensive you all found the BPB. We thought the idea that you should be accredited at all sufficiently offensive and didn't really worry about the letter of the alphabet that preceded the level. We too are chastened.

The BPB has been through a process of consultation with some fairly hand-selected representatives in the industry. Members of the Department of Planning’s Local Government Planning Directors Group nominated some employees who were doing "certifying" and this group met with the BPB on 18 June. Other groups (like EDAP) were invited to consult too and depa was invited to meet with BPB Chair Sue Holiday and CEO Neil Cocks on 9 July.

The depa Committee of Management considered version 2 when it met on 3 July. Committee Member Jim Boyce from Taree had been invited to the consultation group earlier and Jim was able to take the Committee through the detail of the proposal.

What can you say? If you are going to be beaten up, then you hope that those attacking you cause the least damage. And this latest proposal is a pretty soft way of doing it.

The Committee carried a unanimous resolution identifying our historic and continuing opposition to privatising development control in principle and our opposition to the accreditation of council employees because we believe sufficient checks and balances (and importantly, no conflict of interest) exist in local government to make this all under necessary.

The resolution can be found here.

This resolution has now been forwarded to the BPB as our official response.

Version 2 is so inoffensive (in the context of those things we have asked them to reconsider) that you wonder why they would bother. It's hard to see how it provides any value at all other than achieving the policy objective of some sort of accreditation regime. And while the welcome steps to dilute the original requirements of the scheme will be welcomed by local government, the private certifiers’ lobby groups like the AIBS and the AAC (or whatever Craig Hardy's group is called) won't like it at all

Isn't it funny to watch how Government develops public policy?

We expect to meet again with the BPB after they have considered a variety of things we've asked them to think about in the Committee of Management resolution.