A lesson for all councils from Bega Valley - you can’t make employees forfeit their rights to progression under the Award

Leanne Barnes 1

GMs can do the darndest things! Leanne Barnes is the GM at Bega Valley Shire and we’ve just stopped her imposing a “pause” on progression for employees in the Council’s salary system.

In a process looking to save some money in the COVID-related fiscal pressures experienced by all councils, the GM and Executive developed a Draft Operational Plan and Budget 2021-2022 which included the following question and answer for staff:

Q.           Why has the annual salary increment been “paused”?

A.            Employee expenses are one of our largest costs. While we needed to find savings in the budget, the priority was to maintain our current staffing level and continue to deliver services for our community. Staff will receive the annual award increase of 2%.

Not a proposal at all really, because this was advice that it had been paused, not that it was being contemplated. And it was to be included in the public exhibition of the Draft Operational Plan and Budget, so the community have a say.

But apparently no one on the Executive knew that employees have rights under the State Award for an annual review and possible progression based on the acquisition and use of skills and/or performance. And worse, no one thought to ask anyone who did.

On 4 June we emailed the GM and her trusty advisors and you can see our email here. It’s an email that will be useful if your council is looking at similar steps to make employees responsible for the effect of the pandemic.

We said, no, sorry, you can’t do that, because your obligations under clause 7 Salary System prevent it. You can ask employees to forfeit it, and make a sacrifice, but you can’t simply decide to “pause” it and somehow put your obligations under the Award on hold. We urged them to take advice and they eventually contacted LGNSW.

I was thrilled to receive a thank you email from Leanne expressing her appreciation on behalf of the Council for pointing out that what they were trying to do was unlawful under the Award, and they were indebted for my advice. That’s not what they said of course, because always these withdrawals or retreats have to be expressed in a way that makes it look like they weren’t caught red-handed by the unions.

So Leanne said, “we considered your submission on the Operational Plan and most importantly the feedback and input from staff”.

Thanks Leanne, you’re welcome!