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We do something about toxic workplaces, avoiding
WorkChoices and Private Certifiers give us all a laugh
We make Cooma-Monaro apologise to members
The Planning Institute of Australia a year or so ago released a report on the shortages of planners (and other related development professionals, by implication) and identified part of the problem in local government being the existence of what they described as “toxic workplaces”. PIA, being a professional body, can’t do much more than identify the problem. Someone else has to deal with the toxic workplace and remove the toxicity.
For the past few years we have had a strategic alliance with the Local Government Network of the Planning Institute of Australia. We recommend that members of ours join PIA and PIA recommends that planners and other eligible professionals in local government join depa. We are PIA’s preferred union in local government.
Even before PIA’s report identifying the toxic workplaces, we had been active in removing the toxicity. We have run serious disputes about occupational health and safety issues at Gosford (forcing the Council to spend more than $1million replacing the air conditioning) and Lake Macquarie (forcing the Council to deal with lead contamination in the roof space of the administrative building) but occupational health and safety issues are not the real cause of the toxicity. Unpleasant workplaces often exist because of bad management and, particularly, can be created by councillors.
Don’t get us wrong, we have a lot of time for those councillors who commit themselves to the community for the improvement of community amenity and the environment. Unfortunately there are plenty of councillors out there who seem to get a perverse satisfaction out of attacking staff and carrying out personal vendettas. While the NSW Government and the Department of Local Government continue to issue guidelines about codes of conduct and how councillors should behave in dealing with staff, and while they introduce sin-binning legislation to punish errant and uncompromising councillors, many still don’t get it.
Members at Parramatta started us in the right direction by putting a ban on a councillor who had criticised a member in the local press and at a public meeting. An apology was forthcoming. Members at Eurobodalla, Mudgee and famously, at Nambucca at 2005, have also secured apologies from councils or councillors.
Coinciding with the implementation of WorkChoices, members at Cooma-Monaro Shire found themselves under attack by a loud mouth councillor either ignorant of, or insensitive to, his obligations under the Code of Conduct.
A real tough bloke, who would never say he was sorry.
Members at Parramatta, Mudgee and Nambucca imposed bans on councillors or attending public meetings to get what they wanted. At Cooma-Monaro this course of action was not so readily available, the comments having been made by the councillor just before WorkChoices hit us and the deadline we had imposed for an apology coincided with the first day of the operation of the offensive new legislation.
Members wouldn't really thank us if our good financial management was battered by significant fines for involving ourselves in what WorkChoices describes as “unprotected industrial action”. When we couldn’t secure an apology in the short term from the councillor concerned, or a recognition from the council that they had done the wrong thing by not containing this person, we filed a dispute and we made a formal complaint to the Department of Local Government.
Increasingly, as WorkChoices inhibits our ability to take direct action and prevent members from imposing bans except under rigorous and complicated bureaucratic processes, we will have to look at different ways of securing what we want.
Our complaint to the Department of Local Government was acted on immediately. Departmental staff made it abundantly clear to the General Manager that the sort of comments that were made should not have been made in a public forum, that the mayor should have shut the boofhead councillor up and that if the Mayor, failed to carry out his responsibilities, then the General Manager had a role in reminding him of his obligation under the Local Government Act.
And he was a "he", of course.
The Council and the community were aflood with rumours. The councillor concerned (Councillor Good, somewhat ironically) was the sort of person who never apologised and was never going to recognise that he had done wrong. We were excited about the prospect because he would be a good councillor to be the first councillor sin-binned under the Government’s 2005 amendments.
But, despite all of the bluff and bravado, Counsellor Good delivered an unreserved apology, apologising for his comments and remarks, and clearing the air with aggrieved staff. His apology was publicised widely in the local press.
We often scoff at things like trying to remove toxicity from the workplace without using an industrial solution, or Department of Local Government taskforces on skill shortages that don’t recognise that paying people more money keeps people in jobs. Professional bodies or government departments making pronouncements about things that require industrial solutions are really wasting time.
When it comes to toxic workplaces, it is only the union that provide the solution.
Just like we did at Cooma-Monaro.
Avoiding WorkChoices (back)
1 The High Court
Proceedings in the High Court challenging the WorkChoices legislation as a misuse of constitutional powers are meant to make life clearer and easier for all of us. WorkChoices either is an abuse of power, or its not. People are employed by constitutional trading corporations or they’re not.
The High Court has been hearing challenges by the states and UnionsNSW (to which we are affiliated) over whether the legislation is fatally flawed by being a misuse of a constitutional power. The case continues. Significantly, and just to muddy the waters even further, the Commonwealth made submissions to the High Court that not all corporations which trade are trading corporations under the constitution.
The Commonwealth argued that there had to be “substantial” trading for a corporation to be affected by the legislation.
There is a vigorous debate happening in local government at the moment about whether councils are trading corporations. There is some precedent suggesting that some may be and some may be not. A council, for example like Hunters Hill, that doesn’t even have a library, is unlikely to be found to be a trading corporation. On the other hand, big councils with substantial commercial activity and incomes from trading are more likely to be. We're not saying they are, just that they are more likely to be.
If the High Court throws out WorkChoices in its entirety as an abuse of the corporations power of the constitution then that will be the end of it. If it doesn’t, then the question will become one of what “substantial” trading is.
Unhelpfully, the Commonwealth didn’t hand up to the judges on the Court what they believed would be guidelines in satisfying the test of substantial.
Is it 50% of income derived from trading or 60% or some higher figure? What percentage of anything makes something “substantial”? Is it an overwhelming majority of activity? Whatever the percentage is, is it a percentage of income received or a percentage of employees involved in generating that income from trading?
Lawyers get rich thinking about questions like that.
The unfortunate solution to this confusion would be some guidelines determined by the High Court about what constitutes “substantial”. That could take years.
2 Other solutions explored (back)
In the meantime, depa and the other local government unions and the LGSA continue to meet with the NSW Government to find a way to keep WorkChoices away from Local Government employees. We think the simplest and most practical thing to do is to amend the Local Government Act and have employees employed by the General Manager. The General Manager would be a “natural person” (and isn’t that an opportunity for some stand-up comedy?) and because employees were not employed by a corporation then they couldn’t be affected by WorkChoices. How easy is that? We like this as a simple solution.
Others don’t like it as much as we do but the NSW Government recently did similar things to a range of health and other organisations where employees of the State were employed by a corporation (like the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust, for example) and are now employed by the General Manager of the Trust. This keeps all of those employees safe from the ravages of WorkChoices.
At the same time, the unions and the LGSA have reached agreement on referral agreements, which would allow the NSW Industrial Relations Commission to mediate and resolve disputes and unfair dismissal claims just like they did so well before WorkChoices came into operation.
The LGSA has recommended the referral deeds to councils and members should be encouraging their council to sign up with the unions on a general referral agreement to allow the resolution of disputes and an unfair dismissal referral agreement to allow continued access on unfair dismissal.
Negotiations are continuing with the LGSA and unions over a Deed of Agreement, which would be signed between the Council, and the unions and provide collective entitlements for members of the unions. There would be some issues of remedy arising from these agreements because they would need to be enforced in the Supreme Court. Better though, than WorkChoices.
3 What should we do in the meantime? (back)
The NSW Ministers for Industrial Relations and Local Government have written to all councils urging them to take it easy over the introduction of WorkChoices. Issues need to be resolved in the High Court, we don't really know what a trading corporation is, what constitutions “substantial” trading etc. We haven’t yet seen any immediate threat by councils looking at taking advantage of the options of WorkChoices – the placing of people on individual Australian Workplace Agreements (AWA's), the removal of other rights etc.
But you never know. We intend to publish on our web site a shame file of any Council which does the wrong thing. None are doing so yet.
We need to know immediately if any manager or Council starts talking about new arrangements under the auspices of Workchoices or any approach to place members on individual AWAs.
WorkChoices is not designed to benefit you and councils won't be proposing to put you on AWA's as the first step toward throwing more money and security at you.
That’s when the trouble will really begin.
Canterbury does the right thing (at last) to protect their staff (back)
In 2005 we were involved in an exhausting dispute with Canterbury Council in the NSW Industrial Commission. We dealt with this dispute in some detail in the December 2005 Bulletin, but here is a summary:
The dispute arose from an assault on a member carrying out his responsibilities as an Environmental Health Officer. The physical assault was accompanied by a subsequent threat over the employee’s phone from another food shop proprietor in the same area.
We accepted that the Council had done the right thing in allowing the employee time and access to the police so that the criminals could be prosecuted and in providing suitable counselling to the employee to deal with the trauma of the assault and the threat.
But there was a gap in what the Council was prepared to do. We thought the Council had failed in their general responsibility because no one at the Council thought it appropriate to tell the two thugs that their behaviour was unacceptable. One got a letter five weeks after the inspection that led to the assault and the other was written a letter six weeks after the threat.
Both of the letters were about deficiencies in cleanliness and hygiene and neither made reference to the assault of the threat.
We pushed the Council in the industrial dispute to accept that they should immediately have someone (preferably someone really big and burly) visit them and tell them it won’t be tolerated. They thought that inappropriate.
At a meeting of our members at Canterbury Council it was revealed that another member had been assaulted by the same person. On that occasion, while the member had complained to the police about it, Council had done nothing.
To cut a long story short, Canterbury is one of those councils that moves extremely slow. The Council has had a long history of tolerating unacceptable behaviour against Council staff because they didn’t want to get the community offside.
Those days are now over. Council has now agreed to a new policy dealing with assaults on staff which guarantees that, in addition to the prosecution where appropriate, the council will, within five working days advise the offenders that the behaviour is unacceptable.
When you think about it, one of the first things the Council should do…….
Canterbury introduces smoke-free workplace (back)
Cripes, d oesn’t this bring back memories? For those of you who have been members for a long time, you will remember that ehabsa/depa conducted a campaign in July 1986 to have local government provide smoke-free workplaces.
The Minister for the Environment in the Wran New South Wales Government, Bob Carr, launched our campaign in the Sydney Botanical Gardens. The campaign featured a poster which showed a desk and chair set up in a pristine piece of Tasmanian Wilderness and asked the question, "Shouldn't your office environment be this good?"
Within a period of two years or so we had encouraged all councils across the State to introduce smoke-free offices.
And gee, didn't Bob Carr do well for himself in that intervening 20 years as well!
Last week we received a proposal from Canterbury Council to introduce a policy for smoke-free environments for Canterbury employees. No, it wasn't lost in the mail, it was a genuine proposal which made no reference to any existing policy that needed amendment.
Knowing how Canterbury works, as we do, it was probably waiting for the General Manager's approval.
What can be done about the shortage of planners? (back)
We were delighted to receive what was described in a letter from the Minister for Planning, Frank Sartor, as a “personal invitation" to attend the Minister’s Planning Profession Forum on 27 March.
Held in salubrious surroundings on the 41st floor in Sydney, the Forum was attended by a wide range of people who had also been personally invited by the Minister. There were councillors, general managers, academics who teach planning, bureaucrats from the government, PIA, some real planners and people who do planning in councils, depa as the only union invited and lots and lots of developers.
The forum was opened by the Minister and there were contributions made about toxic workplaces and about what the Department of Local Government had found in investigating the shortage. No one suggested (until we did) that planners found local government and unattractive place to work because their idealistic commitment to the community was, remote as a matter of course, constantly thwarted by the Council.
Neither did anyone suggest (until we did) that paying a proper rate in providing conditions of employment would do or what the steam the flow of experienced planners and planning staff from councils back to the Department of Planning or to the private sector.
Developers thought that the best way of addressing the shortage of planners was to reduce the amount of planning done by councils. Less planning regulation and more reliance on the altruism of developers and their commitment to the community, architectural excellence and environmental sustainability was the answer. Who needs planners at all?
Clearly there was going to be little agreement between such disparate interests. The Minister announced that a core group would be established to "go forward" with concrete proposals. Our contribution about removing toxic workplaces and paying decent rates of pay (the real solutions) ensured that we won't be included.
Don't expect anything very useful from the New South Wales government on addressing the shortage of professionals in planning and development. It was nice to be invited. Thanks, Frank.
A new Committee of Management for 2005/2006 (back)
Elections for the depa Committee of Management were conducted by the State Electoral Office in March and April and provided an injection of fresh blood. Frank Boom, a member of the Committee for 16 years and a Vice President for the majority of that time, selflessly decided that he should make way for some new and younger ideas. Thanks for your contribution over the years, Frank. Wayne O'Connor had left Parramatta Council and local government generally. Wayne had been a member of the Committee for four years.
Jim Nichols from Lithgow Council had been a member of the Committee for many years and was elected to fill the vacancy of Vice President. Two vacant positions on the Committee of Management were filled by Nicole Ashton from Cabonne and Stephen Parisotto from Leichhardt. All other existing officeholders were re-elected.
The 2005/2006 Committee is President, Kerry Hunt (Leichhardt), Vice Presidents, Andrew Spooner (Campbelltown) and Jim Nichols (Lithgow), Nicole Ashton, Glenn Ford (Ryde), Les Green (Parramatta), David Lemke (Wyong), Stephen Parisotto, Leon Rodwell (Shoalhaven) and Ian Robertson as Secretary.
2006 recruitment campaign announced (back)
At the first meeting of the new Committee of Management on 4 May it was resolved to encourage an intense recruitment campaign for new members in June and July.
We have been encouraging members to recruit new members by providing a bottle of good red wine every time five members are recruited. The Committee decided to improve the reward.
Now, for the months of June and July only, you can get a bottle of wine for, not five new members, not four new members, not three new members but two new members.
Yes, that's right. If you recruit two new members you will receive a good bottle of red to make winter more pleasant. And you will continue to receive good bottles of red for every two members recruited.
But, to qualify for the wine, when the application form comes through our fax (9712 5427) it MUST have the name of the member who recruited the new member written on it. If it doesn't, we will still send the wine but to be enjoyed generally by members at the particular Council rather than the specific recruiter.
depa’s membership fees have remained unchanged now for four years. We can keep the fee static because the membership numbers increase every year. This is very unusual given the declining numbers of union members nationally.
Naturally, we need to keep membership numbers increasing to keep the fee at a reasonable level.
All members must have an interest in this. We look forward to your vigorous recruitment and hope we are extremely busy packing and posting bottles to provide winter warmth.
Private certifiers give us all a good laugh! (back)
A number of members contacted us after their Council had received a letter dated 7 May from an organisation calling itself the Association of Accredited Certifiers. The AAC is a lobby group established by private certifiers to represent their interests.
Members were concerned that the letter to general managers was a hoax. It does contain some ludicrous assertions. Amongst other things, it says:
“As you know in New South Wales the roles of both private building surveyors and Council building surveyors are identical".
This, of course, is not true. Private certifiers work for developers and have a pecuniary relationship with the developer. Council staff work for, and are paid for, by the community to test development applications against community and development standards and to ensure compliance with conditions of consent. No one really thinks their roles are identical. Is it a joke?
Sometimes, at corporate lunches, entertainment is provided in the form of a person who is a management expert or an expert in something or other and the entertainer's role is to start out sounding credible but then get gradually more outrageous until it's obvious it's all a joke. It's interesting to watch people working out when it is a hoax. Sometimes people pick it up immediately but the gullible hardly detect it.
The AAC clearly thinks general managers are very gullible indeed.
The letter from the AAC followed the usual pattern. It suggested that councils should improve relations with private certifiers to "minimise the number of complaints made against our members". They wish! What about doing the job properly as a good way of minimising complaints?
They suggest that many complaints are not about unsatisfactory professional conduct and that protocols should be developed between individual councils and this body to avoid formalise complaints. They suggest that "only the general manager or a director, who has no involvement in engineering, building or planning matters should be given the authority to make a formal complaint".
They suggest that details of a proposed complaint to the Building Professionals Board should first be given to the certifier and the certifier be "offered the opportunity to respond to the Council in writing."
Meetings can then take place and if the Council’s director thinks the complaint is valid (that's a director who doesn't know anything about engineering, building or planning, don't forget) it should proceed to a formal complaint but only after it has been forwarded to the Council's general manager or director of corporate services to be lodged.
These people would have to be joking! They would be far better ensuring that their members do the job properly than sending self-interested missives to councils aimed at diluting and frustrating the complaint process.
Finally, they suggest the Council should get their own staff accredited by the Building Professionals Board. We have had heard nothing from the BPB since members very effectively refused to supply information that would have had BPB functionaries auditing Council staff. How interesting now, that the private certifier lobby approaches the issue from this perspective.
Needless to say, this self-seeking and self-interested attempt to nobble councils' ability to complain about their members’ professional standards and competence should be rejected heartily at each Council. Ignore the letter or tell them to bugger off.
The AAC invites each Council to speak to their "executive” whoever that might be. We understand they also do corporate lunches, children's parties, weddings and funerals. Think about the next time you need some entertainment.
Ian Robertson
Secretary
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