• Private certifier gets nailed – depaNews November 2010
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  • Upper Hunter gets coy – depaNews March 2011
  • BPB kills off B1 & B2 - depaNews July 2009
  • Councillors behaving badly Part One - depaNews December 2009
  • Councillors behaving badly Part Two - depaNews December 2009
  • Who is Peter Hurst? - depaNews August 2010
  • It's time to go, Peter Part One - depaNews September 2006
  • It's time to go Peter Part Two - depaNews December 2006
  • BPB survey on accreditation – depaNews November 2008
  • Improbable things start to come true – depaNews June 2010
  • Sex, lies and development – depaNews February 2008
  • Pizza man feeds non-members – depaNews April 2011
  • Bankstown wins HR Award – depaNews December 2010
  • Love him or loathe him - depaNews October 2007
  • Good Bad & Ugly issue – depaNews November 2010
  • Upper Hunter lets the dogs out - depaNews February 2011
  • IRC puts brakes on belligerent seven – depaNews June 2009
  • It's Tweedledum and not Tweedledumber - depaNews March 2007
  • 28 April International Day of Mourning - depaNews April 2009
  • IRC orders Hurst 'apology' published - depaNews December 2010
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  • OH&S Day of Mourning – depaNews April 2009

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Do I need anyone's approval if I want (or have) a second job?

Details
Published: Monday, 06 June 2011 11:11

Section 353 Other Work of the Local Government Act requires only that you advise the General Manager and seek approval for work which "relates to the business of the Council or that might conflict with the members council duties".

Employees are not required to obtain approval for work which falls outside this strict test. We have fought off many councils over this issue since the Act was made in 1993. It is none of the Council’s business if you have other employment on weekends or at night outside the test - unless it becomes obvious that you are tired at work and it becomes a performance management issue.

Please tell us if your Council is requiring people to disclose details of any work. We will stop them doing this.

It's pretty easy to work out if you work "relates to" or "conflicts with" the Council job. This is not a time to be clever, it is a time to err on the side of caution and declare things and have been approved by the General Manager has sound risk management.

Section 353 also allows the General Manager to approve work, even if it "relates to" or "conflicts with" your Council job. The purpose of this section is to ensure that the General Manager knows what's going on so that the GM can, in turn, manage the Council’s risk.

The GM has a discretion to allow this work.

Please note also that section 353 does not specify "perceptions of a conflict", so if a Council refuses an application under this section because of people's perceptions, they are adding a test additional to that provided in the Act. This is inappropriate because the purpose of the section is to allow the Council to manage relationships and conflicts of interest and not the perceptions of the community or others.

Robbo's Pearls...

What’s happening to the senior staff changes?

On 15 October 2021 the LGNSW Board, spurred on by a second recommendation from another ICAC investigation (Operation Dasha) to get rid of the “no reason” sacking of senior staff, unanimously resolved to do precisely that. LGNSW would now support the views we and the other unions have been expressing for decades. This was a historic consensus.

The consensus was to amend section 340 of the Local Government Act 1993 to ensure that the only Senior Staff positions, on term contracts and denied access to the industrial relations commission would be the general manager. And to amend the Industrial Relations Act to lift the remuneration level for access on unfair dismissals.

All we needed was the OLG and the Government to cooperate. That was close enough to two and a half years ago. 

There was some venal opposition from the usual suspects, but the policy was overwhelmingly reaffirmed at the LGNSW Special Conference on 1 March 2022. That was close enough to two years ago.

In April 2023 a Labor Government was elected in NSW. We all had a reasonable expectation they’d be more supportive of employment changes that reduced the risk of corruption and provided fairer working conditions. They say they are.

What have you blokes been doing?

Hoenig and Minns

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