Next month …

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Published: Wednesday, 26 August 2015 09:30

Probably more councillors behaving badly, maybe some ICAC action at last on the appalling things happening at Mid-Western, probably more inaction from people we rely upon to properly regulate the industry but maybe one or two good news stories as well - certainly, one absolute ripper …

Uh oh, look out!

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Published: Tuesday, 25 August 2015 17:51

It may not be the most attractive analogy, but let’s face it, if you’re walking and a dog has left a deposit on the path in front of you, you can tell what it is immediately. You don’t need to examine it up close, test it with a prod, or a sniff, or how it feels under your shoe to seek further information.

It’s a dog poo, and you should avoid it.

So, when we discovered what the Office of Local Government has in mind for changes to the employment provisions of the Local Government Act to coincide with potential amalgamations, we didn’t really need to wonder too much what it was.

The OLG has proposed that “a set of topic based information papers will be published electronically setting out the details of the proposed changes and the rationale for them” in October but we can call it now - look out, you don’t need to examine it up close, give it a prod or wait for some miscreant in the Office of Local Government to prepare an information paper to tell you that you can happily step in it.

We know that the Government wants changes to the Local Government Act in place and probably new boundaries in time for the local government elections in September 2016. We also know that the Minister for Local Government has assured the unions that whatever happens, employees will remain employed under the Local Government State Award. But it was not until what was intended to be a confidential document prepared by the OLG was tabled by a witness before the Upper House Inquiry into local government, that we discovered how bad the things were that we didn’t know.

By marvellous misadventure and a lucky question, USU northern Manager Stephen Hughes was asked by Standing Committee member David Shoebridge whether he was aware of any proposed changes to employment being contemplated as part of the reform process and, by enormous coincidence, he did.

He had come from a meeting of the Ministerial Advisory Group that morning (LGNSW, LGMA and the USU) where a document prepared by the Office of Local Government and titled The Development of the new Local Government Act Phase 1 Amendments”, had been circulated. Unwise to tell porkies to a parliamentary committee, Stephen had no option but to acknowledge he did and when asked if he had it, because he had come straight from MAG, he did. And it made its way into the official documentation tabled to the Committee.

If the OLG wanted to do things in secret, it would have been smarter not to give anyone that document until the Standing Committee had finished its public hearings.

You can see what’s in the document using this link.

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depa’s submission to the Legislative Council Local Government Enquiry

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Published: Thursday, 30 July 2015 14:03

The Legislative Council has established a General Purpose Standing Committee to enquire into Fit for the Future and the potential for local government reforms including compulsory boundary changes. The final report is due on 24 August.

The Committee will consider a range of issues which are relevant to the interests of employees in the industry - including “evidence of the impact of forced mergers on municipal employment, including aggregate redundancy costs”.

This is a perfect opportunity to develop and enhance our policy view in an expanded version of the article we ran in May’s depaNews. And a good opportunity to get our Dirty Harry/Mike Baird image and mischief to a wider public.

Here is our submission.

A message to the Minister and the Office of Local Government

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Published: Thursday, 30 July 2015 12:59

Sack councillor Jilly Gibson

Local government is an industry with a significant focus on regulation. That’s what our members do. If councils didn’t properly regulate, if they sat on their hands or looked the other way, communities and the government would be up in arms and do something.

The Minister for Local Government and the Office of Local Government have, since 2013, been sitting idly by as spectators and watched the unfolding dysfunctional fiasco at North Sydney Council. A mayor elected by the electorate rather than by the council, Jilly Gibson, has one supporting councillor and nine councillors who are opponents. If “irretrievable breakdown” is a suitable ground for the dissolution of a marriage, it should also be suitable grounds for the suspension or sacking of a Council. Or one or more of its councillors.

The risk with a mayor elected by the entire electorate, as opposed to a mayor commanding the support and respect of a majority of the councillors, is that there may well be occasions when the mayor simply doesn’t have the numbers. At North Sydney, the mayor never has the numbers - whether that’s an issue about relocating and renovating offices, mentoring programs for young people, representing the Council on regional boards, keeping a mayoral car, the appointment of the general manager or whatever, it’s normally 8 - 2 with the mayor the loser.

A mayor elected by the electorate commands no greater authority nor respect than one elected by the other councillors. Yet councillor Gibson behaves otherwise – asserting that there is some greater authority, or credibility, that derives from getting a majority of those who can be bothered to vote. The Act doesn’t support councillor Gibson’s opinion.

We’ve had far too much involvement in the breakdown of the relationship between the mayor and the councillors and the mayor and the general manager. It’s a mess, we’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.

But not so the Minister or those in the Office of Local Government, who sit and watch the debacle unfold - happily comfortable on the fence with the pickets in places that most of us would find unpleasant and unbearable.

In 2014 the Minister required the Council to show cause why they should not be suspended. The competent, rational and effective majority got their individual acts together and were able to convince the Minister that they shouldn’t be suspended and, as a fall-back, the Minister issued a Performance Improvement Order under section 438A of the Local Government Act. Things should have been done by April but the Minister begrudgingly agreed to an extension of time.

Amongst other things, the PIO required two conflict resolution processes to be undertaken - one between the mayor and the councillors and one between the mayor and the GM - the two key relationships that have broken down. And it won’t escape observation that the only thing common to both dysfunctional relationships is Jilly Gibson. A timeframe was provided, the processes began but no resolution or compromise could be agreed in either.

So, when the Minister’s deadline expired on 22 June, the Council advised the Minister that the requirement to conduct the process had been satisfied but the processes themselves had failed.

That’s five weeks ago and in the intervening weeks these things have happened:

• The mayor had two Code of Conduct findings of misconduct made against her. The first related to defamatory allegations and the investigator found, and the council required, that the mayor apologise. The deadline for the apology has expired and there is no apology.
• The second of the Code of Conduct misconduct findings related to confidential information and resulted in the council censuring the mayor on 19 July.
• The council also resolved to note other things as well - expressing their “increasing concern” that this was the third finding of a significant breach of the Council’s Code of Conduct by the mayor and their “grave concerns” that the OLG “has failed in the past to provide serious sanctions”.
• The resolution at part 5 deals with the “duty and obligation of the Office of Local Government to promote public confidence in the Code of Conduct, the Local Government Act and good governance in local government generally”, something which is clearly not evident at North Sydney.
• That week the local rag, a compliant conduit for the mayor, announced under the heading “Mayor shoots back at council” that the mayor would now seek whistle-blower protection after the two misconduct findings against her – claiming there was a “vexatious political campaign against her” and “misuse of the council’s code of conduct provisions for political purposes”.

North Sydney finds itself in a dreadful position. It is already, by statistics compiled by the Office of Local Government, the second most complained about Council in New South Wales, the relationships between the mayor and the councillors and the mayor and the GM are dysfunctional, the conflict resolution processes required by the Minister under the performance improvement order have failed and findings of misconduct and breaches of the code of conduct continue.

The Mayor has borrowed the Emperor’s new clothes. There is no cloak of respectability or authority provided by “popular” election and the democratic process means that if you don’t have the numbers on the Council you don’t have the numbers on the Council. Behaving otherwise puts all of local government, those who are elected to it and those who work for it, in disrepute.

The Minister under section 440I can suspend councillor Gibson and should do so immediately.

While the rest of the industry is jumping through narrowly-focused fiscal hoops to survive to the future, councils are given 40 days to comply with a variety of directions from the Minister, instant action to restore the credibility of local government at North Sydney must be taken now.

Has Local Government Super dumped uranium and nuclear yet?

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Published: Thursday, 30 July 2015 12:40

Not yet but, leaving that aside for a moment, LGS has continued its high reputation as a responsible investor. Again this year it was the top rated fund internationally in the Asset Owners’ Disclosure Project which ranks institutional investors across the world on the disclosure of carbon risk and steps they are taking to manage it.

The Fund has just won Super Ratings Infinity Award for leadership in sustainable and responsible investment for the fourth time. The $9 billion fund now has more than $5 billion of members’ savings in sustainable and responsible investment strategies, including shares, private equity and direct property assets, the largest commitment of any super fund in Australia.

The Sustainable Australian Shares option in the fund returned 20.87% in the 2013/14 financial year until May – partially because the fund was an early adopter of moving out of the mining industry which, shortly thereafter, became an underperforming sector.

LGS is the only superannuation fund to win the Infinity Award four times and ranking number one in the world again in the Asset Owners’ Disclosure Project remains its most significant and international achievement.

But sadly the fund retains its new commitment to nuclear and uranium stocks. Our representative director on the LGS Board Sam Byrne is monitoring the returns as they may be affected by this unpleasant investment category and while LGS satisfied a couple of zealot board members fascinated with nuclear energy, it doesn’t mean LGS will always be committed to that energy source.

It’s hard to regard nuclear energy as a “clean” alternative energy option. Certainly Germany doesn’t - regarded as the “Green superpower” of Europe, they are phasing out nuclear power stations and anticipate that all will be closed around 2022.

If Germany can slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% on 1990 levels by 2020 (and by 55% by 2030 and 80-95% by 2050) and replace them with renewable energy, there is a lesson here - not only for Australian policymakers, but for the investment strategists within our own super fund.

It’s now 330 days since the fund resolved to lift the screen preventing investment in nuclear and uranium that had been in place for a decade. While this was done under the illusion that nuclear power generation resulted in zero carbon emissions, and that was all that mattered, (apart from the astonishing emissions involved in the construction of power stations) our director on LGS Board Sam Byrne, is monitoring how the removal of the screen affects returns and whether this compensates for the reputational damage already done.  And there is always the unmanageable risk.

As Chernobyl and Fukushima showed, you never know …

We hate it when members disappear – and it wastes our time too

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Published: Thursday, 30 July 2015 12:35

We like to run a pretty tight ship in the depa office that we spend a lot of time chasing members who disappear and go to another Council or just disappear generally or go off on parental leave. We know that when women are about to give birth, one of the last things they would be thinking about would be contacting the union to put their membership on hold. But we have an arrangement where women on parental leave can put their membership on hold until a return to work because we have found a large percentage of members doing this need help on their return to ensure suitable part-time working arrangements.

We have strict rules about unfinancial members and the main reason that members become unfinancial is that they leave to take parental leave and payroll deductions stop.

We would be eternally grateful and would save a lot of time if you could please let us know if:

• you are going on maternity leave/parental leave and would like to put your membership on hold
• you have returned from maternity leave/parental leave and are resuming payroll deductions 
• you are moving to another Council
• you are leaving the industry entirely.

Please don’t disappear on us.

We drag the dawdlers at Sydney City into the modern world (and watch them waste a good employee)

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Published: Thursday, 30 July 2015 12:26

This is the third article in eight months resulting from the glacier-like, sloth-like, snail-like pace of modernising the City’s approach to critical human resources issues. First as a candidate in our Worst HR in Local Government issue in December, then in reporting on a dispute we had filed about two issues where the Council had simply failed to respond in anything remotely approaching a reasonable time frame.

Our dispute was about two issues. First, their policy on “Other Work”, regulated under section 353 of the Local Government Act where the Council, contrary to and exceeding the intention of section 353 had been requiring employees wanting to do work in addition to their council job to declare and seek approval for anything, whether it “relates to or conflicts with” the Council job or not. Micro-managing, prurient, invading of privacy and then seemingly incapable of meeting, discussing, reviewing and getting it right in a reasonable time frame. And second, the old-fashioned and discredited approach to putting people at a certain salary level on term contracts, whether they are permanent employees or whether they are employed conditional upon grant funding or projects.

In the dispute reported in January, the President of the IRC Justice Boland, never one to tolerate dawdling and a lack of application, directed that there be an agreed policy between the Council and the unions by 10 March - an eight week timeframe where we observed that the people we deal with in HR couldn’t get a lunch ordering by that date. At the same time we discovered that Sydney had this inappropriate policy, we also discovered that so did Wyong. But unlike Sydney, Wyong was able to discuss, comprehend, identify the problem and resolve it in a bit over four weeks.

The President directed that the City have an agreed policy with the unions on term contracts by 21 April, only three months away - enough to cause apoplexy for those bureaucrats getting in the way of resolving the matter and, for want of a better image, far too interested in slowing down the snail than doing things in a timely way. “Whooa, not too fast there”.

The President’s rocket and valuable assistance from LGNSW meant that a new section 353 policy, consistent with the legislation and satisfying our needs, was developed and only a month late. But things didn’t go so well with the review of term contracts.

The Local Government (State) Award in 2010 recognised the risks for councils in employing people on term contracts where that is inappropriate. A range of decisions in industrial tribunals had found that rolling over contracts or artificially creating terms for people whose employment is ongoing and continuous is inappropriate. The 2010 Award identify the areas in which Councils could employ people on term contracts - generally when people are employed to do work of a fixed duration, or on funding for a fixed duration.

Our interest had been pricked by the City’s treatment of one of their most valuable and entrepreneurial employees. A member of ours who had one three-year term rolled over, and at the end of the second three-year term was told by his director (a person who should know) that he would get a third term. They even sat down to work out what he would do over that period. Unfortunately, the director was out of the loop on funding issues and, after offering a three-year term, the City reneged on it. We contested it, the three-year term was offered but the City was always going to terminate it after 12 months.

It’s now terminated and we have an agreed termination payment for the member concerned but this also highlighted the City’s total failure in managing valuable human capital. Being astonishingly and painfully slow is one thing, but wasting and mismanaging talent and skills is worse. Our member was responsible for establishing the world-renowned Small Bars Program, the Food Trucks program and the app and he developed and presented Small Business 101 - an overwhelmingly popular monthly event where up to 160 people would come along from small and medium business wanting to know how they can work with the City and what the City could offer. That sounds like valuable human capital (as the HR professionals (sic) describe it), however you look at it.

Bloody hopeless is a reasonable way of describing their treatment of this valuable entrepreneur - and in a climate where the NSW Government wants to nail the current Lord Mayor and her regime by compelling business owners to vote, removing this connection and service to business won’t do the Lord Mayor and her regime any favours. The programmes Richard instituted and ran are iconic achievements that define the City. What a waste of a great talent.

In the Commission last week we could report that the Council has all but agreed by policy to introduce similar restrictions to those which operate in the State Award - something which will have immediate implications for a substantial proportion of the 400 employees on term contracts. The contracts will be reviewed as they fall due and, if they don’t satisfy the tests in the State Award, then the employees will be acknowledged to be permanent employees and that status will operate from the first contract with the City. This is a significant change for the better – benefitting employees and the City.

All that it needs now is for the City’s Executive to endorse the settlement on 13 August. This is a significant modernising change in the Council with advantages for both the City and the employees. Sure, the President of the IRC wanted it done by 21 April, but it’s taken more than double that period of time and we await, with high expectations, the snail to deliver the agreement next month.

Reviewing our rules is much more exciting than watching paint dry

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Published: Monday, 15 June 2015 13:19

Well, it was for us. There hasn’t been a complete review of depa’s registered rules in living memory. We’ve made a few adjustments over the time to recognise new offices, or to change our name or something like that, but our rules reflected the fact that they were drafted in a different era. The rules may have never been comprehensively reviewed and technological changes alone make this a big job.

Two reports with recommendations, a bit of legal advice and all signed off with a unanimous resolution of the Committee of Management at our last meeting on 11 May. If the rules were ever comprehensively reviewed it would have been more than forty years ago. We’ve now rewritten them entirely.

All our financial controls were about cheque signatories when we only sign two or three cheques a year anyway and all of our transactions are electronic; we needed electronic options for decision-making for the Committee of Management; we needed to recognise that members can become members over our site; we wanted to ensure members who apply for membership actually pay us before they get accepted; we wanted to reduce the timeframes for unfinancial members so we can remove them sooner; we wanted to reduce the timeframe and the way we go about throwing out members who don’t pay if they disappear or leave the industry and don’t tell us; and we wanted to remove reference to being allowed to charge an admission fee as well as membership fees.

We wanted to provide better financial oversight by the Committee of Management in the interests of good governance too and remove the burden of resigning with notice and paying us money to leave when you leave the industry.

We made innumerable other changes. Some practices, like allowing members on parental leave to put their membership on hold and still receive the benefits of union membership while they were on leave and negotiating their return to work, also needed to be legitimised.

Some old rules disappeared, new rules were drafted and we are ready and fit for the future. For want of a better cliche.

This was foreshadowed in the last depaNews and the NSW Industrial Registrar has now advised that the new rules have been accepted in their totality and apply from 1 June. They are on our website. The news made our day. (Last Dirty Harry quote this financial year, we promise.)

You can use this link to see the new rules with a further link to the certified stamped copy from the Industrial Registry (at the bottom of the page) to see how comprehensively things have changed. The only rules unchanged are rules 1 and 4, some changes are limited to re-numbering but the rest of the rules have been changed in one way or another and many have been completely rewritten.

If you would like to wade your way through a marked up copy of the old rules to see the millions of changes, please contact Margaret in the office and she can send you a pdf.

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Old blokes collapse and let Mum keep working part-time

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Published: Wednesday, 20 May 2015 13:40

Somewhat coyly we haven’t disclosed the name of the Council where we have been having a running brawl with some 19th-century minds about a member returning to work part-time after her second child.

This is the Council that refused a request for a 31 hour four day week and demanded that she return to work full time. You’ve had your maternity leave, get back to work! So much for the changes in social attitudes over the last 50 years and the provisions of the legislation and the Award.

We made them provide a three month trial and the Commission tried to help them with encouragement to develop performance criteria so they could establish whether there were operational reasons to reject the request that this arrangement continue. There were no operational reasons to reject the application in the first place and, after almost 3 months, tail between their legs, the Council conceded and provided an extension of the part-time arrangements.

We give advice to parents wanting to return to work on a part-time basis all the time. Sometimes every week. There are some councils where parents returning to work are supported, where a variety of arrangements are put in place to ensure they don’t come back too early, feeling guilty and compromised in their responsibilities to their family, and are then joyfully welcomed back to fill the gap created by their absence. Welcome back.

And occasionally there are the laggards, the councils stuck in the 19th century or where the old blokes think they are part of the misogyny of Mad Men, who think they can reject requests for part-time work, not for operational reasons, but for political or ideological reasons. It’s not the 19th century, it’s not even the 20th century and it certainly isn’t 1950.

These councils give scant regard to their obligations under the Award and the Fair Work Act and not only look ancient, uncompromising and obsolete, but they then have that painfully reinforced when they find they can’t get what they want.

Fit for the Future

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Published: Wednesday, 20 May 2015 13:34

Uh oh. I know what you’re thinking. “Did he amalgamate six councils or only five?” Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a 17 seat majority government, with the most powerful electoral mandate in the world and recommendations from an independent panel that would blow your Council clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?

A rigid template of what constitutes fitness for the future is being hammered onto the 152 local government areas and no-one really knows how things will look when the dust settles. Probably not even the Government.

But everyone knows local government needs to be reformed, and the reform process will involve changes in boundaries, but no one wants anything to happen to their own Council. NIMBYism is both natural and understandable but it won’t get in the way of a rampant Government zealous about reform. How rampant, or reforming, or even how effective any changes might be remains to be seen but Premier Baird took the Fit for the Future strategy and process to the election and had a resounding win. An easy opponent yes, but a resounding win nevertheless.

30 June is the deadline for councils to be able to establish that they are financially sustainable for the future and should be left alone.

Councillors with far more important things to do than worry about long-term financial sustainability are justifiably concerned. Busy pursuing their own individual self-interest; looking after their mates or the local Racing Club; ignoring their own council’s cleanup orders under the Protection of the Environment Operations Act; having the ICAC looking over their shoulders; dabbling in the general manager’s responsibilities; or persecuting staff; or being in a minority and trying to ignore majority resolutions of councils; or who are the subject of performance improvement orders from the Minister for Local Government; and a variety of other distractions, who is looking after their ratepayers and citizens?

The council’s employees are, that’s who.

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