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Who has the worst HR in local government in 2015?

Details: Published: Tuesday, 22 December 2015 12:16

Our special issue in December each year is always one of our most popular. Eagerly awaited, a willingness by members to back their own HR against all comers, not a lot of accolades floating in or happy stories, and an interest across the industry and elsewhere. The general interest is well beyond our own finely-honed fascination with seeing the industry develop a commitment to positively managing staff; providing proper performance-rewards; appropriate market-based salaries; flexible and accessible leaseback car arrangements; a real commitment to flexibility for work and family purposes, and an end to the misogynist historic attitudes of the old blokes (and they’re not all blokes, as we will show) that a woman’s place is really in the home, or only at work if she can dump the kids somewhere.

We’re optimists. We want human resources people and management generally who are not antagonistic to employees. Far too often, HR people think their job is to stick it up the employees, save money, cut conditions, frustrate commitments to health and well-being, strip away cars, cheat people in job evaluations. The proper role of human resources is to recognise that employees are the most important part of the business because they are the ones who provide the services and do what the business is intended to do. There is not enough of this attitude in local government.

There is also bugger all of that attitude evident in the way the Minister for Local Government is handling the current amalgamation program. For the government, it seems it’s all about dealing with the Mayors and ignoring entirely those people responsible for providing the services. That must change.

As we head into the bold new world next year with a reduced number of councils, we can only hope that bigger councils will provide better HR management. In no other profession (sic) or occupational group is the maxim about paying peanuts and getting monkeys, more evident than HR in local government.

Councillors behaving badly - bans on at Parramatta

Details: Published: Friday, 18 December 2015 10:38

Pick the real tyrant

It was only a matter of time, really. Parramatta Council has never accepted the 1993 separation of powers between their role and the role of staff. It’s been more than two decades but, for a minority of the current council, they still don’t want to know.

Councillors have wandered through the building, demanding access to people, rifling through files, checking on or advocating for issues that should be recorded as a conflict of interest, bagging staff and generally behaving like, well, a 16th-century monarch pumped up with a divine right to rule.

When Councillor Garrard was Lord Mayor in 2009, one of the first things he did after election in September was to abolish Mufti Day for those commoners employed by the Council who he may need to summon to his Mayoral Chambers/Throne Room, without notice. Couldn’t possibly turn up other than suited and tied and demonstrating a proper level of obsequiousness. And that they bow, just that little bit more deeply and worshipfully as well.

We stress, that the overwhelming majority of current councillors at Parramatta are respectful and supportive of staff and do the right thing. We are talking about four or five boofheads.

Parramatta was the first Council to have depa members place a ban on a councillor after he had bagged members in a public meeting in 2000. Enough, was clearly enough and something had to be done about this notorious and unacceptable behaviour. And the councillor subsequently apologised.

Members put bans on again in 2009 after councillors took an unseemly interest in planning decisions affecting businesses where sex was provided, or could be provided, on premises. They treated the planning staff with contempt and demanded a number of peer reviews (all of which came back supporting the Council’s own staff) and the settlement of that dispute included a commitment by the Council for some training to improve their understanding of the separation of responsibilities in the Local Government Act - training which we hope they didn’t spend too much money on, because clearly it didn’t work.

On 18 November, the recently reinstalled Lord Mayor Paul Garrard (he’s, baaaack!) demanded entry into a staff area. Councillors should not have security clearance to gain access to floors where staff work anyway and in the move to the new building, the Executive took the opportunity of starting with good governance and behaviour and recommended the councillors be provided with security access only to their own floor and where they legitimately had business.

But the councillors, so comfortable getting their own way whenever they want it, insisted on amending the recommendation to provide them with access to the foyers of employee-only areas.

And so on 18 November, Councillor Garrard, bedecked in chains (well, almost but not the sort of chains we’d like to see him in) knocked insistently on a glass door to the staff area until the door was answered. Then, ignoring the Council’s own policy on the interaction between staff and councillors he claimed that he had complied with the policy of providing prior notice, which he hadn’t, and that he was both invited to the meeting and expected - another porky because the only people who knew he was going to be there were the developers.

Let’s be clear, councillors have no role in a pre-lodgement meeting and historically at Parramatta are only there to intimidate and bully staff on behalf of the applicant or the developer.

Chinese hackers embarrass LGNSW and LGMA

Details: Published: Friday, 18 December 2015 10:37

Those mischievous Chinese hackers, not happy with burrowing their way into the Pentagon or interfering with international missile systems, have now done something even more outrageous.

There is a letter dated 11 December addressed to the Local Government Minister Paul Toole being circulated in the industry purporting to be signed by both Keith Rhoades, president of LGNSW and Barry Smith, president of LGM/PA. This is not inconceivable in itself, but the subject of the letter is - the welfare of Senior Staff!

Clearly it is a hoax. The address and the name of the Minister are both correct, so this can’t be something that LGM/PA had anything to do with. The last correspondence we saw from that organisation to the Minister was addressed to Minister Tool and their last letter to Keith was addressed to Keth!

And while we’re a bit suspicious of the image chosen to accompany the letter as well, (reproduced above) what makes it even more obviously a hoax is that LGNSW is the organisation representing councillors. Councillors sack general managers who don’t deserve to be sacked, but who do get sacked for political reasons. They defend the standard contract and their ability to sack general managers for no good reason at every opportunity. So clearly there is a conflict of interest that makes this enormously improbable.

Far too many GMs with good reputations have been sacked by councillors with less than admirable reputations and every time we call for an end to standard contracts, or term contracts at all the senior staff, we have never, ever, ever, received any support from the councillors’ organisation.

Here comes the knockout punch

Details: Published: Friday, 18 December 2015 10:23

Today Premier Mike Baird will bring out the knockout punch. Revealed exclusively in this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald, the government will proceed to amalgamate the 43 metropolitan Sydney councils to 25 - consistent with the recommendations of the Independent Review Panel and IPART.

At this stage it is less clear what is proposed for regional New South Wales. It was always expected that the Premier would go hard on the metropolitan area because it had always been a smart option back to the days of the Sproat’s Report in 2002 - even though a succession of Labor governments lacked the resolve to do anything useful about it.

But the coalition government is conflicted in the bush because councils are significant local employers. It will be hard for Mike Baird and his Liberal/National government to bag Bob Carr and his successors for lacking the bollocks to do something about rationalising the broke councils if they can’t find their own pair to modernise local government in the bush.

According to the Herald, the announcement will target 150,000 as a suitable size for a metropolitan local government. Essentially that means:

Hornsby merges with Ku-ring-gai
Pittwater takes the northern part of Warringah while Manly takes the rest and some of Mosman
North Sydney gets the rest of Mosman
Ryde, Lane Cove and Hunters Hill will be combined
Waverley and Randwick have agreed to merge
Botany Bay will merge with Rockdale
Marrickville, Leichardt and Ashfield have agreed to merge
So have Burwood, Auburn and Canada Bay
Strathfield will have to choose and will choose Burwood and Canada Bay because their genteel ratepayers would prefer to keep away from the Kardashians and the conflicted councillors/developers on Auburn but you can’t always get what you want
Parramatta will expand and that will be the end of Holroyd (and the Hills might get a bit too) and
Bankstown and Canterbury will be forced to merge

This morning the Minister for Local Government Paul Toole will conduct a teleconference with mayors and later in the day maps will be published for certainty about proposed boundaries. We can send you a link to the information next week.

All of these boundary changes will be introduced under the provisions of the current Local Government Act. The Boundaries Commission will be revived to conduct public hearings before any amalgamations proceed. This will roll out through most of 2016.

As will the development of a new Local Government Act and the Government has announced that it may need to delay the September elections while that happens. For those of us hoping to see some sacked councillors (especially at North Sydney and mid-Western, just to name two) we will have to wait and continue to deal with what we’ve got.

The Government will also announce more money as financial incentives for those which amalgamate-increasing from $550 million to $700 million.

And all of this will be underpinned by the government’s continuing commitment that employees will remain under the Local Government State Award or any existing enterprise agreement and the protections available against compulsory redundancy for three years in the Act.

At this stage, it appears that the announcement will not trigger a “proposal period”, so members should pressure their councils to sign up to the commitment to provide five years protection with the individual letter to employees using the template in our November issue. Individual letters is the preferred option of the three local government unions.

HR awards issue out on Tuesday

Details: Published: Thursday, 17 December 2015 11:28

More nominations than we could cope with. More than ever, in fact.

The winners of the worst HR in Local Government Award will be announced in the special issue on Tuesday afternoon.

IRC survives to be dismantled another day

Details: Published: Thursday, 17 December 2015 11:26

We fearlessly predicted in the October issue of depaNews that the IRC would be dismantled before the end of the year and in the November issue that it was likely to be announced on 1 December. That was the date of the swearing out of DP Rod Harrison in Newcastle and the Treasurer and Minister for Industrial Relations Gladys Berejiklian, unusually, was going. This was a rumour with sufficient momentum, and provided from three different reliable sources, that it had to be true.

But The Hon Gladys didn’t make it to Newcastle for the swearing out of DP Harrison on 1 December and there was no announcement made.

The rumour is strong and continues. We suspect an announcement is delayed only because it’s caught up in issues about exit strategies. Or strategy. It will happen and may still happen this year. It will certainly happen next year unless something dramatically changes.

It would help if the Minister for Industrial Relations came out and denied it. A nice clear and unequivocal statement would do it. That and a reassurance that the IRC and its good work will be properly resourced and continue untouched forever.

But some good news too - use this template if your Council wants to give you five years protection against forced redundancy

Details: Published: Wednesday, 25 November 2015 15:52

There has been a developing level of support in the industry for providing more than the three years protection against forced redundancy provided in section 354F of the Local Government Act in the case of amalgamation, boundary change, transfer to another local government area etc.

While some councils have signed Memoranda of Understanding with the unions there are questions of enforcing rights under such an arrangement. While it provides a clear indication of what the understanding was at a particular moment in time, it’s hard to find a tribunal to enforce it.

Enterprise Agreements can run only for three years, so that’s not a useful avenue but there is a better way.

It is possible for councils to agree to change your conditions of employment and provide five years of protection. They do this by offering you this as a change your employment contract/conditions of employment with individual letters to each employee. You agree to the change and the deal is done. You know how contracts work - offer, acceptance, contract made.

So, our barrister prepared a suitable template which is being used at a number of councils at the moment and has even been promoted subsequently by the USU - albeit with a minor change. The three unions are now suggesting that this is the preferred approach to provide improved protection because it is capable of being taken to a tribunal and enforced.

Here is a link to the document and you can start hassling your Council now.

Good luck to you all in December.

Time is ticking away

Details: Published: Tuesday, 24 November 2015 12:45

Tick, tick, tick. Time is running out for three significant announcements that can have an overwhelming effect on local government, conditions of employment in the industry and careers. We dealt with two of them in the October issue of depaNews.

1. Fit for the Future

Develop some criteria that you say covers all considerations, drop a few of them off, let IPART change them - including making up a test of “global city” for Sydney, so you can nail Clover - and set a tight deadline for responses to the IPART recommendations of 18 November.

Expectations are that the Premier will do something dramatic on 1 December - or some time very soon after that.

If you would like to read an insightful and incisive review of where we are on this now - without any vested interest and with total impartiality - here is the Editorial from yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald. Recommended reading.

2. Industrial Relations Commission - to be or not to be

Sometimes you have to publish a rumour if it comes from a variety of reliable sources and where all you really want is the Government to deny it. Last month we published our expectation that the NSW Government would shortly announce that the judicial functions of the Industrial Relations Commission would be transferred to the Supreme Court and the dispute resolution and related functions would be slid into NCAT.

We made it clear that wasn’t what we wanted, we wanted the august and venerable century old institution to live forever, the Government to deny the allegation and commit to properly resourcing it.

Workforce NSW led with the story in its 6 November issue and said, amongst other things, that the Hon Gladys “has repeatedly failed to put the issue to bed”. And quoted her responses when they had asked like “the Government is committed to a strong IR system in the State and has a proud record in this area” and “NSW is enjoying historically low levels of days lost to strike action”. Opaque, moi?

In December, popular and respected Deputy President of the IRC Rod Harrison retires and on 1 December will be “sworn out” in Newcastle and, somewhat to everyone’s surprise, the Treasurer/IR Minister will be attending. Notwithstanding the fact that DP Harrison, for his contribution to good industrial relations in Newcastle over the decades really deserves the entire Cabinet chairing him around Newcastle while the Premier and Deputy Premier frolic alongside throwing petals in his path, the attendance of the Treasurer/IR Minister is unusual.

Expectations are high that the evasion will end and an announcement about the Commission’s future will be made.

We hope we are proved wrong.

3. 2015 Worst HR Awards to be announced in December

Yes, the Golden Turd can make or break HR professionals (sic) and even Directors of Corporate Services and GMs, too.

How has the industry gone with restructuring, job evaluation, treating its “human capital” fairly for better productivity, looking after work: life balance with flexible working arrangements, or living up to its own boasting about cutting edge employment practices and being an “employer of choice”.

Or even the things that shouldn’t be difficult, like complying with their Award obligations to provide part-time work for parents returning to work?

And what about last year’s nominees, have they learned anything?

Tick, tick, tick, those who have done the wrong thing, or don’t understand what it is to do it, are getting nervous.

Any sweaty palms in HR at your Council?

We file section 106 for the unfair sacking at Mid-Western

Details: Published: Wednesday, 28 October 2015 10:03

Sacked without good reason, sacked without any reason, sacked without the opportunity to put up a defence and sacked during an ICAC investigation where the majority group of councillors wanted the director of planning’s head on a plate. Dutifully that head, and the head of another director, were delivered by the GM in the first sackings without explanation in the second level of management in local government’s history.

An inglorious historical first for GM Brad Cam. Something that won’t appear on his CV, you can be sure.

As foreshadowed in the last issue, depa believes that the standard contract is unfair to senior staff employees. And the circumstances at Mid-Western leave much to be desired in terms of fair treatment.

The section 106 application came on before the Industrial Registrar this morning.

The employers had filed a notice to strike out the application for want of jurisdiction and other issues, and this will be referred to the President to be allocated for determination next month.

NSW Government to shut down Industrial Relations Commission

Details: Published: Wednesday, 28 October 2015 10:00

Two years ago the O’Farrell Government reviewed and consolidated a number of tribunals into an expanded NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. At the time they contemplated the possibility of also folding in the Industrial Relations Commission but, in the face of united opposition by both employer organisations and unions, decided not to do so.

The IRC is currently a shadow of its former self. Understaffed, most awards now operating in the Fair Work Commission, Crown employees restricted by the 2.5% public sector pay policy, the unnecessary loss of good talent and a reduced and ageing workforce, the Commission has shrunk and the Government has been reluctant to make permanent appointments to replace them. Bit of a shame they got rid of that talent, looking back.

The Court of Arbitration was established in New South Wales by the Industrial Relations Act 1901, the Industrial Court was established by the Industrial Disputes Act of 1908 and the Court of Industrial Arbitration was established by the Industrial Arbitration Act 1912. These were the antecedents of our current Industrial Relations Commission and it has performed these roles continuously ever since.

Section 19 of the Industrial Relations Act requires the Commission to review all of its Awards to ensure that they are current and not old-fashioned or obsolete. On 14 October, 60 or so State Awards were listed for consideration to ensure that they were up-to-date. The Local Government State Award and the Sydney City Council Award, both made by the current President of the IRC Justice Walton last year, were also reviewed. So we were there, defending our turf.

It was standing room only in the Commission for the captive remnants of what had been the pre-eminent industrial tribunal nationally. But, with virtually all but Crown employees and local government now wrapped up in the Fair Work Commission, many of those present were conscious of the rumour, from multiple and varied sources, that the Government had already decided that the historic and esteemed Commission would be split in two - with its judicial role going off to the Supreme Court and the non-judicial functions being blended into NCAT.

And, conscious of the rumour, it was observed that this was a great housekeeping opportunity for the Commission to clean up before the move, to ensure before handing over that everything was up-to-date and modern and, similarly, it would be a good opportunity for the Government to announce that the move was going to happen, because all of the organisations involved in the NSW jurisdiction were present, in one form or another, in the proceedings and would be slow to march on Parliament house to complain.

But the Government sat quietly and it’s hard to know whether the handful of remaining members of the Commission (and in a month there will be only one judicial member left and that is the President) were even aware of the rumour themselves. After all, who would be game to ask them?

But a rumour from so many disparate sources, and reading between the lines, we’re pretty damn sure that later in the year this will be announced and the glorious venerable days of the NSW Commission will sadly be over.

The Supreme Court doesn’t handle industrial matters although there are couple of judges in New South Wales with industrial relations experience who could do so. But, if the Government goes ahead and does this, we're in trouble in local government - the awards and enterprise agreements of the industry have always been awards and agreements of the NSW IRC. The IRC has been (usually) the most user-friendly of the industrial tribunals and one not afraid to make precedents that have, in turn, flowed into the Federal system.

This will be a terrible day. And unless we are very much mistaken, that day will come by the end of the year.