February depaNews

Appointed on a Wednesday and my heart stood still,
Do-do Ron Ron, do it Ron
We can’t wait until he tables the Bill
Do-do Ron Ron, do it Ron 

Yeah, my heart stood still
He’s got nothing else to do
But when he tables the Bill
Do-do Ron Ron, do it Ron

(with apologies and acknowledgement to the Crystals)

You all know the story, it’s notorious.

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 an 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 1996 to lift the remuneration level for access on unfair dismissals.

All we needed was the OLG and 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.

We know it’s been in the Minister’s office but nothing’s happened. We’ve put a clock on our homepage so we can count how long since 5 April 2022, when the Government was appointed following the election, and the Hon Ron Hoenig was appointed Minister for Local Government.

https://depa.au/ and you can also count the days.

As an aside, the CBD column in the Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday this week, in an article about who NSW politicians had been meeting with, said this:

"Finally, a shout out to Local Government Minister Ron Hoenig, who held just 16 meetings in the final quarter 2023, the fewest of any government Minister."

It’s not good enough, this is a burning issue.

It’s more than two years now since MidCoast Council looked at options for tampering with the salary system that had existed for years without complaint, and which provided annual progression for employees who “met standard”, albeit an increase of only 1.25%. It was predictable, and any council that has all its employees meeting expectations is a lucky one. But the GM and his HR/industrial adviser thought it tantamount to automatic progression, which it wasn’t.

Two years since options were canvassed, and perilously close to two years since an industrial dispute was filed and we had the opportunity of arguing with the Council about just about everything.

The Council executive endorsed the recommendation. The USU and LGEA have had joint meetings this week and we provided our members with an electronic vote which overwhelmingly returned acceptance of a compromise solution. The unions were recommending acceptance of a proposal drafted by Commissioner Webster after two hearing days and then further conciliation trying to settle the dispute. This was a dispute which would be understated to describe as interminable.

The Council’s first proposal was that no one would progress beyond entry level any longer for what had been the historic test of “met standard”. None at all. But the compromise solution provides continuing progression but where employees will need to meet standard for a couple of years. There are a range of options, all of which are a long way from the loss of that progression. Plus an opportunity for more relaxed requirements to progress based on “exceed standard”, which the unions will be strongly enforcing.

We return to the IRC on 23 February where the unions can advise the Commission that we also have accepted her recommended solution. The Council has a problem with the Commissioner’s words “excluding the arrangements for the Water services existing salary system arrangements introduced in 2019”, which the unions think means everyone currently on those arrangements, but where the Council thinks it means hardly anyone…

Having won the prestigious and authoritative Golden Turd award in 2022 and 2023, it could be someone else’s turn this year. But...

The December “Worst HR in Local Government” issue gets around. Even to councillors at MidCoast. Our reporting on the alarming collapse in the morale of staff at Mid Coast since 2018, and a report to the Consultative Committee last year identifying 300 resignations in 12 months, attracted the attention of one councillor. Yes, only one councillor out of 11, and considering that section 8 The Council’s Charter of the Local Government Act provides amongst other things that the Council be “a responsible employer,” that seems an indictment of the rest. What do they think constitutes being a responsible employer?

Councillor Peter Epov’s concerns were reported in the Daily Telegraph Newslocal last week after he had placed questions on notice to the GM to answer at the Council meeting on 7 February. According to the news report he was concerned because he understood “it costs approximately $20,000 to replace just one staff member so when you get hundreds resigning in one year this equates to many millions of dollars in lost productivity. And this converts to a failure to deliver services” he said.

He asked “can the GM confirm that depa, for the second year in succession, conferred the Golden Turd Award” to Mid Coast Council for ‘the worst HR in local government’”. And whether the claims were correct that “MidCoast Council has had 300 resignations in the past 12 months, as stated in the last report to the Consultative Committee” and “Almost 500 of Council’s USU (United Services Union) members meeting and rejected the proposal to the salary system proposed by MCC with not one person supporting them?”

Those three reasonable questions were clear and unequivocal and could all be answered with a yes or no. Because they were true, they should have been answered with yes.  But while the questions might be reasonable, the GM’s response wasn’t. He said the matter was confidential due to “personnel matters concerning particular individuals (other than councillors)”, even though the questions sought whether the allegations were factual, and made no reference to any individual or any personal matters.

What does “personnel matters concerning particular individuals (other than councillors)” actually mean? A reluctance to answer the question, or to fob off the questioner, or some unwritten rule to protect the guilty?

There needs to be some proper explanation of how a Council can lose more than 30% of its staff in a 12 month period, so we will ask for one, and clarify in our next issue.

We’ve had two examples of Sutherland Mayor Councillor Carmelo Pesce abusing our members. The first, in 2017, expletives and anger about a member dealing with non-compliance under both the Food Act and building regulations of the Mayor’s cafés where the GM at the time, Scott Phillips, secured an apology and a handshake from the Mayor within 24-hours. And encouraged the manager who had made the complaint to always bring this kind of unacceptable behaviour to the attention of the GM for a remedy.

The second, in June 2020 where another member was chasing the Mayor to comply and received a similar serve, expletives and anger again about his cafés, but when the complaint was escalated through the organisation the GM Manjeet Grewal didn’t secure an apology or a handshake and we needed to file an industrial dispute to try to get the Mayor behaving.

We gave up on the GM and wrote to all the councillors asking them to agree to commit to better standards of behaviour and cutting out abuse, and only the ALP councillors did so.

The positive out of that awful experience is that there is now a Memorandum of Understanding between Sutherland Shire and Georges River Council (both councils have had issues with councillor behaviour) for compliance issues concerning properties or businesses owned by councillors, to be dealt with by compliance staff from the other Council. Hard to threaten them.

Councillor Pesce, is now favoured for Liberal Preselection to replace the disgraced member for Cook the Hon(!) Scott Morrison. The question is what do the electors in Cook think are important values and qualities in their local Federal member?

Given our experience with the Councillor’s behaviour to our members, it was only a matter of time before investigative journalists, scrutinising the pretender to the crown and finding plenty to investigate, contacted us.

See the ABC News article here