June 2023 depaNews

 

Commissioner Muir this morning consented to the making of a new Local Government State Award 2023, to apply from the first pay period after 1 July. We provided a summary of the more significant benefits of the new Award in emails to members on 22 May, with a copy of the proposed draft Award. It has lots to recommend it.

Starting with a 4.5% pay increase from the first pay period on or after 1 July, in addition to the employer’s obligation to increase compulsory superannuation by another 0.5% from the same date. What’s not to like?

The Award was made with the consent of the LGNSW, the employers’ representative and the four unions - depa, the LGEA, the USU and the NSW Nurses and Midwives, who have historically had a few members in a few councils.

This process began with the parties exchanging logs of claims in September 2022, we’ve met consistently, had our good days and our bad days, but this is an important document with significant pay increases that are the envy of the State Public Sector in New South Wales. Those workers, including jobs that saved us all during Covid, are still arguing with the NSW government for something above 4%.

There are some really good benefits for members, achieved by the unions over a long and intense period of negotiation.

4.5% from the first pay period after 1 July this year, 3.5% from the first pay period after 1 July next year, and 3% from the first pay period after 1 July 2025. And in 2024 and 2025, there will also be an additional one-off payment of 0.5% of ordinary pay with a minimum payment of $1000. Nice!

We’re particularly pleased that the Award will acknowledge we don’t work all the time, and there will be a right to disconnect - out of hours when you’re away from the office, weekends and when you’re on leave. When Council started rolling out mobile phones to staff, many thought it meant that employees were available for work at all hours. That’s not the case, employees are only required to work outside hours if they are on call and receiving the on call allowance under the Award. The right to disconnect, established in this Award, is a provision which will send a cold shiver down the backs of bosses who think they can ring you, and have you answer the phone, any time they like. No more you can’t, mate.

There is also a provision to recredit annual or long service leave if you’re sick or injured while you’re on leave, and can’t get the benefit of the break (the return of an historic entitlement forfeited years ago but embraced after a lot of bad Covid experiences), catch up increases in car allowances, an annual minimum car allowance of $10,000, a new allowance for electric vehicles, and a commitment for us to meet and monitor the rollout of electric vehicles and how costs should be properly shared between the Council and employees who have them as a leaseback vehicle.

Plus, we’ve clarified and emphasised the obligation on employers “to provide adequate staff and other resources to enable employees to carry out their duties and functions over the course of working hours and are not unreasonable”. It’s now clause 10(ii) and every employee in the industry should memorise it and make sure that their employer respects it, or else!

But wait, there’s more: broader rights to request flexibility for work; expanded bereavement leave; reimbursement for “communication” expenses if the Council wants you to use your own phone or device; increases in on-call allowances (great timing now you’re not obliged to pick up your phone out of hours); incorporation of changes to parental leave under the Federal Paid Parental Leave entitlements; higher-grade pay if you’re required to work in a higher position while that person is on an RDO, and more.

The 4.5% is the biggest increase in the history of the State Award since it was first made in 1991. It wasn’t easily achieved, it took hard work, required the employers’ organisation’s acceptance of the importance of paying a decent increase because of cost of living increases and mortgages, despite protestations from councils which would have rather you had less, or nothing. It was a genuine cooperative exercise with a common goal of building a more rewarding industry in which to work.

Make sure you take advantage of its benefits.

The Little Red Hen was a story written in the late 19^th century in an anthropomorphic farmyard where the Little Red Hen asks her friends to help plant the wheat, help cut the wheat, help thresh the wheat, help take the wheat to the mill and help make the flour into bread. They all refuse, the Duck, the Cat, and the Dog all say, “not I”, and the Little Red Hen says, “then I will”.

She then made and baked the bread and said, “who will eat this bread” and her lazy freeloading friends all said, “I will”. And the Little Red Hen said “no, no! I will do that”. And she did.

It’s a morality tale but it wouldn’t be in depaNews if we didn’t see the moral of all you good union members paying fees to fund the negotiation of a new award, and your workplace “friends” who don’t do so, still expecting to share the benefits.

When the Award is negotiated every three years, the unions always argue that it should be union members only. The unions negotiate it, growing the wheat, threshing it, making the bread etc, and those who aren’t union members should pay something to share in the improvements negotiated effectively on their behalf. A fee equivalent to the membership fee to the unions who have negotiated this, for example.

It’s always a joyful argument, particularly when LGNSW makes a point of not providing any services at all to councils that aren’t a member of that organisation. We think that’s the right approach, and the principal that underpins it should be reflected in the Award. Clearly what is good for the goose isn’t accepted to be good for the gander.

Given the significant improvements in this Award, now is a good time to remind your freeloading colleagues that this isn’t a present.It’s not a gift from the Councils, nor the unions with their best wishes, but something that was negotiated by unions which are resourced only by fees paid by members.

Try making a claim at BUPA for medical costs if you ‘re not a member, and see how that goes!

The election of a Labor government, not quite a majority but with a working majority with assistance from Independents and the Greens, means we can reasonably expect a Minister for Local Government with more of an interest in fair employment practices in the industry, and an Industrial Relations Minister prepared to review the Industrial Relations Act, and the NSW Industrial Relations Commission to make it more balanced, objective, and effective.

UnionsNSW has been critical of appointments made to the IRC by the former Coalition Government and on the day after the election result described the NSW Commission as “hamstrung and biased”. Clearly there will be pressure to make some changes and the Government has committed to do so.

(Historic note, industrial tribunals work better if there is a balance between members from the employers’ side and members from the unions’ side. Some of the best members of the Commission over the decades have been employer representatives who have risen to the challenge of dealing with equity and fairness. It goes without saying that representatives from the union side understand that already. The current Commission has one Chief Commissioner and five Commissioners, only one of whom could broadly be described as having had experience with the union side. Time for a change.)

The new Industrial Relations and Work Health and Safety Minister is the Hon Sophie Cotsis, member for Canterbury. The Minister was formerly an official of UnionsNSW, a union official for the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, a political advisor to former Treasurer Michael Costa, and then a two-year stint in a private sector infrastructure company before starting her parliamentary career in 2010. A BA from Macquarie and a Master of Legal Studies from UTS. We like Sophie, (if we may be so bold) she has already established a process to review the NSW Industrial Relations Act, we’ve submitted some proposed legislative changes, and we expect to be meeting in the next couple of months.

The new Local Government Minister is the Hon Ron Hoenig. A hugely experienced councillor, Mayor of Botany for 31 years while practising as a barrister and working for the Public Defender. He became the member for Heffron in 2012. A committed local government true believer, better company than most when we had a short stint together on an advisory committee established by a former local government Minister Ernie Page, and we look forward to the new Minister putting a rocket up the Office of Local Government and flushing out the blockages that have delayed introduction of fair employment arrangements for senior staff.

What, with the Award and all, and a new Government more accessible and more philosophically aligned to unions, the Office of Local Government’s Employment Reference Group has not met for months. That doesn’t mean that the things that are important to the local government unions and the employers are not being dealt with, just that they’re not being dealt with in the frustrating, obtuse, sloth-like, dawdling manner they have been over the last almost 2 years since the industry consensus on getting rid of senior staff below the level of GM was established.

This has been an issue we’ve argued about for at least seven years when OLG told us that if we can get a consensus with the employers about what to do, then they will present it to Government. It wasn’t an encouragement, it was a cruel hoax, put to us by someone who didn’t believe a consensus was possible. So then, when we did, they dawdled.

We are not the only ones to be disappointed with the OLG and its indifference, bordering on hostility, to the historic consensus to provide fair employment for local government senior staff by putting them all back on the Award, nor their embarrassing statistics about the how long it takes conducting investigations, particularly those against councillor’s behaving badly, nor the secrecy of their processes and their refusal to be transparent, nor their preference to cover up rather than admit error, and fix it.

The NSW Audit Office on 25 May released a report on the effectiveness of OLG, finding OLG:

• does not conduct effective, proactive monitoring to enable timely risk-based responses to council performance and compliance issues,
• has not clearly defined and communicated its regulatory role to ensure that its priorities are well understood,
• does not routinely review the results of its regulatory activities to improve its approaches, and
• lacks an adequate framework to define, measure and report on the OLG’s performance, limiting transparency and its accountability.

Wow, tell us what you really think!

If you’re interested, here is the report: https://www.audit.nsw.gov.au/our-work/reports/regulation-and-monitoring-of-local-government-0

Planning Ministers and the Department of Planning (or whatever name it’s known as over the years) has always had a role in making life difficult in Local Government. The introduction of private certification, accreditation of council employees, creating parallel accountabilities,the fantasy about standard model codes is and templates hammered over local government areas, and planning and environmental obligations without consideration of whether one size really does fit all, but the Planning Portal? Really?

Whose ludicrous idea was it to set up an arrangement that is currently, from reports from frustrated members across the state, meaning things that could have been done previously in 15 or 20 minutes can now take three hours?

Churning work, creating backlogs, irritating applicants, frustrating Council staff who want local planning instruments taking into consideration local conditions and practices, not standard conditions that frustrate everyone, sucking the joy out of planning and the hopes and dreams of Council planners, disappearing into the black hole.

And the State gets the fees! And the control.

How is your experience of the Portal?

If you’re wondering what portal, it’s the ****ing Portal, just to be clear. That’s how any member who rings us describes it.

Please let us know, don’t write the great Australian novel, just some summaries and hard-hitting points, so we have some broad information with which to pursue Government.

There’s a lot of history in this for us, both in relation to the former councillor, and the Office of Local Government.

On 19 June, NCAT decided to disqualify former Councillor Funnell from holding civic office for two years. OLG made the application, we had attempted to intervene in support of the OLG action, which they opposed - something they seem duty-bound to do any time we raise anything.

It’s good to see a serial pest finally disqualified but it is reasonable to wonder why the prosecution was limited to two instances of misconduct when OLG would have had at least 20 to choose from, and why they would propose only a two year penalty, meaning he couldn’t stand for election in the next local government elections, when the multitude and frequency of complaints would warrant longer. And he had indicated he wasn’t interested in standing at the next election anyway, and didn’t contest the penalty...

But, there is more to this. The two examples of misconduct were in 2020, and where Tim Hurst, former director of OLG had famously said in an order about the same person that there had not been “any prior offending or post event conduct in the past two years and the lack of previous incidents of misconduct”.  Really?

Here is a letter we sent to the current Executive Director, Local Government, DPIE, Brett Whitworth, on 19 June, with some important questions.

We will publish a full report in our July issue.