December depaNews

The Ascension

Well, sadly it has happened.  On 8 December, IRC President Michael Walton was sworn in to the Supreme Court.  The swearing-in, was part of the dismantling of the IRC that we have been forecasting accurately for more than 15 months - despite the reluctance of the Government and other significant players to admit they were about to kill off the venerable and century-old institution.

Not only were the rumours not killed off, on 3 August President Justice Michael Walton convened an audience with the parties to the State Award - LGNSW representing the employers, us, the USU and LGEA, to respond to concerns about changes within the IRC that had all of the indicators of confirming the rumours.  The courts and Registry in Wollongong would be closed, the registry in Newcastle would be closed, there was to be a common administrative system with all other courts within the Department of Justice and what had been a readily understandable maximum four number system for case references (for example, IRC 16/2016 etc) had morphed into a ludicrous ten number memory and intelligence test that everyone familiar with the old system failed.

While the President strenuously defended his good work protecting the continuation of the IRC by keeping it away from NCAT, he didn’t mention the other part of the equation - the Government’s plan was that he would be taking the Industrial Court under his arm and heading off to the Supreme Court, leaving the remnants of the IRC and their non-judicial roles to continue.   It could be that he didn’t know, or that he did know and couldn’t say …

So, when The Ascension occurred on 8 December, it had been preceded by advice from the Attorney-General, the Minister for Industrial Relations and the Department of Justice that the remaining Commissioners and the Industrial Registry from 9 January would open for business in 70 Goulburn Street.  That’s right, not folded into NCAT as we had predicted, but sharing a floor with NCAT where it can only be a matter of time before the final indignity will be inflicted upon the venerable and century-old tribunal.

And what a fiasco.  No consultation with the four Commissioners, all of whom were blind-sided by the announcement and none of whom had been invited for an inspection of the premises or consulted on the suitability of the Government’s proposals for the work that the remaining Commissioners would carry out.   The plan of the floor shared with NCAT provides for four small courts (when the Government has committed to there being five Commissioners, including a Chief Commissioner who has not yet been appointed) but these small rooms provide seating for a maximum of eight.  This is a completely impractical arrangement because on probably the majority of proceedings, there will be more than eight people looking for a seat.  In our industry, there can be more than eight people at an individual Council dispute when you consider that there could be upwards of four representatives of Management plus representatives of the three unions etc.  Everyone will have to fight it out and scramble for a seat when the music stops.

But it gets worse.  Clearly the Government neither understands, nor cares how the IRC works: the primary function of the IRC is to settle disputes between parties by conciliation but there are no conference rooms where one party can meet separately with the Commissioner, or wait while a Commissioner meets separately with the other side.  This happens every day in the IRC and the current accommodation, the beautiful Chief Secretary’s building in Bridge Street (which one day you may get to visit as an exclusive international hotel) can accommodate both sides, or separate sides when there are differences of opinion between the unions, or even multiple employers, in multiple conference rooms.

The rooms and the accommodation are not fit for purpose and this can only be described as a farce that could only have been worse if our observation that with a small group of Commissioners and electronic communication, they could all find themselves in a Tarago, looking for parking around the city, was something other than a joke. As we publish this issue of depaNews there is informal advice that the move is off until September, but we will hold off on this because we normally don’t give any credit to informal sources.

Leaving that aside, this is a tragedy of the worst kind.  The Commissioners are left to fend for themselves in substandard accommodation, inconsistent with their primary obligation to bring parties to a dispute together by conciliation and subsequent agreement, and in an arrangement that will, in time, simply get worse...

Everyone has seen the model that the Government is using - dodgy owners of heritage properties know this strategy only too well - they fail to maintain it, they let it rot and decay, and then all that can be done with it is demolition and redevelopment.  Shame. 

Over the last two months we have run stories critical of the unnecessarily confidential approach being taken by the Government in amalgamating councils when both the industry and the community deserve a transparent and open process.

We managed to shame the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) into lifting the confidentiality of the “savings targets” they had imposed on merged councils.  There was no need for these to be confidential;  there were probably 100 people in the industry with access to their confidential information anyway and many of them were employees compromised about trying to keep quiet things that affected their workmates and colleagues; it required councils to put at risk their obligations to disclose decisions made that would create significant effects on employees under clause 39 Workplace Change and Redundancy of the State Award – it was nothing more than a clumsy, officious and petulant restriction.  None of anyone’s business, they reckoned.

We also questioned the validity of the Employment Matters Reference Group, established by OLG to draw on the expertise of LGNSW and the unions on employment issues but regularly hampered and frustrated by restrictions imposed by the bureaucrats at DPC.  But, despite our reservations, we attended the last meeting of the year on 29 November and found a welcoming and conciliatory approach.  OLG was never the problem and we had to remember that we were dealing with two Government agencies here but Steve Orr, the Executive Director, Local Government Reform had more significant things to do (hard to imagine, given his title) and he was unable to attend.   The meeting proceeded in such a pleasant and consultative manner that when it came time to agree on the date for the next meeting, we chose a date when we knew Steve would be unavailable.  A very practical approach to keep us all focused on the positive nature of the Reference Group rather than the negative.

But, making the Government lift confidentiality restrictions on things they wanted to keep confidential is one thing, there has to be an equal and opposite action in response, hasn’t there?

And there was.  The Administrators and IGMs were in town for their normal monthly catch up which became a bit of an Xmas/end of year event attended by politicians and government bureaucrats as well.  While they invited representatives of the USU, depa was left off the invitation list.  Really …

Well, those of us who work in the trade union movement have had a pretty rough time over recent years: crooks; fraudsters; posers; dishonest informants; embezzlers of union funds; prostitutes on union credit cards; other private expenses on union credit cards; thugs; stand over people; criminal officials; a union signing EAs with big retail employers where the employers deliver union membership for their employees and the union agrees to reduced rates of pay, the reputation of unions has taken a real battering.

Union bosses get blamed for everything, as Alan Moir demonstrates in this fabulous cartoon from the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of weekends ago - the original of which, with a number of other fabulous Moir observations, sits happily on the wall in our office.

But now, the trade union movement is being asked to accept responsibility for something else.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s crooked bosses swindling employees at 7-Elevens, or leaseholders at Caltex, or sexually harassing staff at places like Honey Birdette, apparently it’s all our fault.

There has been lots of news recently about crooked, rapacious and greedy employers ripping off staff whether they be students, migrants or simply unaware of their rights.  The articles identify the incapacity of government to properly regulate employment and the media is now pointing the finger at the trade union movement.  It’s no coincidence, they say, that there is such a prevalence of staff being ripped off, abused and treated poorly - it’s because unions are in decline with a gradually declining membership and influence.  What, because union membership is in decline, it’s the unions’ problem that no one can protect people who aren’t union members?

Steady on, you lot.  While unions have had their reputation battered by the bad behaviour of a tiny minority of officials, unions still continue to do their job protecting the interests of their members in the workforce.  Governments downsizing, slashing and burning regulatory bodies, failing to properly fund the inspectorate function of the Fair Work Commission to allow inspectors to be out and about ensuring that employees are properly paid, ensuring that employees know their rights etc..

Despite a few bad apples, we still eat apples and despite the few bad apples the trade unions still remain the only organisations capable of protecting you at work, telling you your entitlements and enforcing them, and looking after your interests.  For our part, we’re squeaky clean, all members get our financial statements each year and you can come up to our office anytime you like and look at anything, even our proud wall of Moir cartoons.

Signup someone you work with who isn’t a member of ours today!

No, but more next week.

Our special issue of depaNews, focusing on the four nominations for the worst HR in local government will be published next week.  Here is a hint for one of the nominated councils: