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Published: Friday, 14 June 2024 12:15
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There will no longer be “senior staff” under the Local Government Act and existing senior staff members will be able to request transition to the State Award, or Enterprise Agreement if their Council has one. When a request is made to transition to the Award or EA “Councils must not unreasonably refuse such a request.” If they do, the employee has access to Industrial Relations Commission to contest the Council’s decision.
No more section 340 of the Local Government Act preventing senior staff from contesting industrial matters or dismissal. What an astonishing transformation, long-awaited, significantly belated and all thanks to Sophie Cotsis, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Work Health and Safety after she took charge of something that had languished in the Minister for Local Government’s office for more than a year.
Then it all happened, a draft Bill was prepared by the Department of Industrial Relations and the Minister's office, consultation with the three unions and LGNSW, and on Wednesday 8 May, the Minister presented the Local Government Amendment (Employment Arrangements) Bill 2024 to the legislative assembly and made her second reading speech.
No wonder that the pic above shows a triumphant Minister and three equally triumphant local government union secretaries.
The second reading resumed on 15 May where the Opposition supported the proposal and it was passed through the Legislative Assembly, without dissent, then introduced into the Legislative Council on 15 May and passed, again without opposition or dissent. Everyone made speeches about the lessons of corruptibility and unfairness revealed by Operation Dasha into the former Canterbury in 2021 and endorsed the concept of fairness for senior staff as if this was the first time anyone had the opportunity to think about it.
It wasn’t of course - a number of them are former councillors who provided examples and assertions of unfairness that they’d witnessed but done nothing about at the time, nor after becoming a member of Parliament.
The NSW Governor assented to the bill on 31 May (another anachronism from our colonial past) and it is now law.
And everyone will have to comply, including the troglodyte opponents who have lost the right to sack good people without good reasons.
Thanks Sophie!
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Published: Friday, 14 June 2024 10:41
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Lucky Edith Piaf, not regretting anything. Who wouldn’t like to live their life like that. Here are some of our regrets over the last 33 years:
the first historic consensus opposing the introduction of term contracts for senior staff was in 1991, and included the employers’ organisations as well as the predecessor of Local Government Professionals (sic), the Institute of Municipal Management. We regret the employer’s organisation abandoning that position, and the history of antagonism to getting rid of the concept of senior staff by LG Professionals (sic).
We regret that LGNSW, up until they responded to the recommendations in Operation Dasha, participating in the unfair dismissal of more senior staff and particularly general managers than anyone else, and probably collectively, more than everyone else.
The role of the Cabinet Office in 1998 rolling the recommendation made by the Local Government Minister at the time Ernie Page, in the five year review of the Local Government Act, that term contracts should be removed because of anticipated flowback into the State SES - which was nonsense. And the decision of the Cabinet that fell for it.
The role of the Office of Local Government, and their SES staff who had been provided with permanent tenure by the Government Sector Employment Act 2013 (something that in the local government we knew nothing about) not flowing a similar provision for senior staff in local government when the SES had been a model for that arrangement in 1993.
OLG’s historic defence of their standard contract and assertion in a variety of investigations, including Operation Dasha, supporting “the “termination without reasons clause... in the event that there was a breakdown in the relationship between the Councillors and the general manager”
And in taunting local government that if they ever delivered a consensus view between the employers and the unions, they would deliver that through the Minister, and then failing to do so.
ICAC in 2002 after investigating Rockdale Council and making findings about corrupt councillor behaviour made observations about “the importance of protections for local government employees involved in the development process”, and then did nothing about it.
ICAC in July 2003, considering correspondence from depa identifying “corruptibility issues that arise from term contracts” after both Rockdale and Tweed, and doing nothing about it, and in a meeting with us in July that year having some pious wanker reject our concerns which he asserted “to some extent that’s the obligation of public service”.
The ICAC 2016 report in Operation Farra at Mid-Western Council observed “the ‘no reason’ provisions in the standard contract, however, could create an uncertain employment environment for a general manager. The Commission’s concern is that such uncertainty could be used to improperly influence the action of a general manager” and, then did nothing about it.
And in Operation Dasha ignoring the submission depa had made about problems with planning and the employment relationships of senior staff, with recommendations for change, that included repealing section 340. We should have been called to give evidence.
We were not able to reach agreement between the unions and LGNSW on transitional arrangements for senior staff similar to the employment protections in section 354D of the Local Government Act continuing senior staff on “the same terms and conditions that applied to the staff member immediately before the transfer day.” This had been the unions’ collective position for a number of months until abandoned in a meeting depa could not attend on 19 March, when an agreement was made by everyone else for what is in the current arrangements.
And obviously I regret spending an hour and a half at the dentist that day and being unable to argue against that happening, and forgetting the first rule of politics - “be there”.
How it could happen that this legislation was carried without dissent, with the support of the Liberal/Coalition Opposition and all Independents, who for most of those years opposed doing anything about this, but who nevertheless subsequently found an interest in doing something about unfair employment practices for senior staff and thought they should trumpet as if it were a revelation, and their idea.
Nevertheless, we record our appreciation and acknowledgement of three people and their critical role in moving LGNSW towards this position in 2021 - President Linda Scott, CEO Scott Phillips and Director Workforce and Legal, Adam Dansie, notwithstanding his awful advice given to Campbelltown to unfairly legitimise disadvantage against a group of employees, predominantly our members.
The LGEA has participated in support over this time, and the USU which, while they were late to the party, they brought a connection to Government, without which this would not have happened. And the new CEO of OLG, doing his best to get over the abject failures and connivance of the past.