2025 depa award for The Worst HR in Local Government
- Details
- Published: Tuesday, 16 December 2025 15:51
How’s HR been this year?
Possibly not that bad, a bit patchy and inconsistent. We’ve had some venal and punitive action against members, filed five disputes, and participated vigorously in two disputes filed by the USU.
Annually we recognise the City of Ryde, still a relatively unpleasant place to work, still the same people making it unpleasant, but also making it unpleasant for HR, all of whom left the organisation and the Council contracted the roles out to an external HR contractor. What next?
Shoalhaven is a regular nominee who, despite losing a dispute to us in 2014 over the appropriate grading of members with supervisory/managerial responsibilities, (its band 3 level 3, or 3/3), we accidentally discovered they were still employing those members on 3/2.
A member contacted us concerned about steps to downgrade their position and remove skills allowances (it looked like rorting job evaluation) but their PD showed that the position was 3/2, classically under-graded and inconsistent with the principle that the Commission made the Council acknowledge 11 years earlier.
We settled early in the year on the five employees we’d been pursuing a claim for, and the Council agreed more than 10 months ago to have their job evaluation and salary system reviewed by Mastertek - in particular looking at the correct grading for those positions across the Council (where there are probably 25 or 30 people affected) and reviewing why, when Mastertek has two grades in the salary system for 3/3 everywhere else, there was only one at Shoalhaven. HR is the answer.
In an update last week, HR has identified a multistep process, requiring approval by the Executive, and with a resolution expected early next year. We can expect restoring the two grades in the salary system, and remedying underpayments - more than a year since we asked for the review. That could be our first dispute of 2026.
Or Lismore, where the unions attended a presentation by the GM who said the Council was in the “pre-consultation” phase. He meant the “pre-proposal” stage, as described in the Award, where ideas were being tossed up, feedback sought, and they would then put together a proposal for the “proposal” stage. But in what had to be the shortest pre-consultation stage in history, while we were being told what they were contemplating, payroll and HR people were beavering away preparing termination letters, complete with calculations and entitlements no less, for employees who would be made redundant after they introduced a structure they had in mind all along!
When we sent an update email to members it turned out we had four members who had already accepted Voluntary Redundancies, and one who had looked at the sinking ship and gone elsewhere.
To be clear, unlike Lismore management, the Director was clearing the deck for the mysterious structure they had already determined to implement. The process was a sham.
The USU filed a dispute, the other unions were there, the Council collapsed, and in proceedings in the IRC they agreed to start again.
You can pause here, and choose a number of words from our list below, that might be appropriate descriptors:
You need never be lost for words after an experience with HR again!
But let’s get onto our disputes. All but one our nominations. In chronological order:
Richmond Valley term contract breaches the Award
Term contracts can only exist under the Award these days in specific circumstances - fixed funding or a job of fixed duration, for example. So, when a member, in their first job in local government, despairing because no one was telling him anything as his two-year term contract came closer to the termination date, asked us about their term contract, it looked like the contract was a breach of the Award.
In the letter of offer the Council claimed it was a term contract under clause 36 (i)(b) because it was “externally funded”. And it was really a contract under 36 (i)(a) but ignored our requests to identify the external funder until they decided it was an administrative mistake by HR and it was really a contract under 36(i)(a) because it was “for the life of a specific task or project”. That was equally wrong, they couldn’t justify that either.
The GM at Richmond Valley, Vaughan McDonald, likes to use words, a bit like Humpty Dumpty, to mean whatever he wants them to mean.
In 2018 the Council was awarded depa’s prestigious HR award, for wage theft. They had created a job titled “scholar”, young people doing courses who were really trainees under the Award. A trainee planner member wondered why her rate as a “scholar” was significantly below the Award rate for trainees - $241.70 a week to be exact, in the first year.
It would have been so easy for the GM to blame his predecessor, who introduced the scheme, but he chose to contest it, claiming we’d be destroying a useful employment arrangement. The GM eventually conceded they were trainees, paid our member around $30,000 in back money and a total of around $160,000 (including adjustments to superannuation) for similarly treated “scholars”.
So, it wasn’t much of a surprise to see the Council defending a term contract that didn’t satisfy the tests in the Award - making up arguments that were patently untrue about our young OSSM and Trade Waste Officer - the job did not comply with the requirements of the Award.
We filed a dispute on 13 August, and five minutes before it was to commence in the IRC, the Council conceded, agreeing they would offer “a continuation in the role”. This was an acknowledgement he was always a permanent employee.
The GM was not happy he’d taken advice from LGNSW and concedes with, so we gave him the benefit of the doubt and expected he would treat the young employee fairly and not disadvantage him. What could possibly go wrong?
Waverley taunts us all with "perceived disadvantage"
The Council had been threatening a new salary and job evaluation system for what seemed like decades and eventually produced it, but at the same time thought it made sense to transfer annual skills progression and performance steps away from the employee’s anniversary date, and move to a performance and progression review season later in the year. This is something an unknown number of councils have done over the years, without any concern being expressed to depa.
Waverley members were blessed with a highly numerate member who calculated that as his birthday was at the very beginning of the year, his review date and both skills and performance reward would be delayed by nine months or so. He calculated the financial loss, much to the dismay of some innumerate expert responsible for the proposal. We forwarded the calculations to this person, who didn’t take this seriously, and despite having been provided with evidence, described the demonstrable disadvantage as “perceived disadvantage.” We filed our second dispute for the year on 14 July.
The GM decided to protect the guilty and wouldn’t explain why that stupid expression was used, but the Commissioner allocated our dispute immediately picked up on the disadvantage and that it would continue every year the employee had progression in the salary system - a bit more numerate than those who wanted to contest this.
In a negotiated settlement the Council agreed to retain the anniversary date for progression from the annual review (which in turn if there were progression available in the salary system, would be automatic unless there was significant performance or behavioural problems) and a separate process for performance reward would operate later in the year.
In doing so, the Council created a virtually automatic increase and the potential for another one based on performance later in the year, in what could be the best salary system ever.
Bega Right to Disconnect argument gets worse
A relatively inexperienced director determined that the on-call roster for EHOs to be available to attend significant environmental incidents, costing $12,000 a year, would be terminated to save the money. This was contested by the manager and everyone else associated with ensuring instant action for the management of significant environmental accidents. Floods can overwhelm sewerage systems, and oyster farms would be seriously at risk.
The Council should be ensuring the quality of those fabulous South Coast oysters, and the most reliable way of doing so is to have an on-call roster. The Director’s idea was that instead of a roster, someone would phone EHOs out of hours, when they are entitled to not answer the phone, to attend the emergency. What a dumb plan.
This required a trip to Bega, and in a meeting with the Director and the GM, the GM said the argument wasn’t about the right to disconnect, there weren’t suitably trained people to be part of a roster. Good call, Anthony. We responded by asking the senior EHO, who was in the meeting, how long it would take to train people to fill the roster if she could drop everything. She said two days and we had happily delivered a solution to the GM and Director that there could be sufficient people trying to do the job on a roster in two weeks!
It ended up being three weeks and we delivered an instant response to the GM’s concerns. You’re welcome, Anthony. Not everyone was happy.
Inadvertently this had created some acrimony in restoring a roster the Director wanted removed and poisoned the relationship between the Director and the manager. This led to the filing of a dispute on 7 November, we had a member on workers compensation and a running sore trying to get that member back to work, in a series of compulsory conferences in the IRC that are continuing.
WorkCover is investigating and using the expression “bullying”, as is our member’s Doctor. The Council has now determined that if there are allegations of bullying, they wants to know what they are, so there is now a parallel investigation being conducted. This will continue into 2026.
Richmond Valley again!
Clearly there are some people to whom you should never give the benefit of the doubt. There was a lesson to be learned after 2018 when our member who raised the issue about being a “scholar” continued until she had received her degree and wanted salary recognition, not just as a professional, but also acknowledging the value acquired as a trainee in the local area. The GM refused her request, she had a better option and resigned in what was an undeniably significant loss of talent.
Notwithstanding the past, we discontinued the dispute, hoping our young member would be treated reasonably and fairly. They did, at least, take advice on the last occasion to settle the dispute, so we put our trust in the GM.
The first thing the Council needed to do after the settlement of the first dispute was to formalise “continuation in the role” - recognition that the term contract was a breach of the Award and the employee was a permanent employee. The PD clearly identified the OSMS and Trade Waste functions, but our member had been trained to do food inspections (at a cost including airfares to Sydney, two nights’ accommodation and expenses), started training to do Protection of the Environment inspections, and he was doing water testing in public pools. Those parts of the “role” needed to continue, otherwise it wasn’t genuine “continuation in the role”.
This took longer than it should have. A new letter of offer was prepared to formalise this recognition, but the letter came with KPIs, signed by the GM no less, and there was no confirmation the additional EHO activities our member had performed would continue. While we had these reservations, the member was approached and told the contract MUST be signed that day, he did so, but noted it was under duress.
What a distressing way to treat a relatively new employee in local government. We’d had enough, it was unreasonable and unfair treatment, and there were concerns about whether his annual performance review would be impartial and would allow progression.
We filed a second dispute on 13 August, adjourned those proceedings to allow the Council’s performance review process to proceed, which was rorted to deny him progression. He had six targets and had met expectations on all of them. On one of them, a KPI of 250 OSSM inspections in the year, our member almost tripled the number of inspections required and should have received at least one “exceed expectations”.
The Council was represented by LGNSW and, after taking their advice, they accepted that the recommendation that he not progress was inappropriate and he was moved to step 2.
This is an unpleasant dispute, and in an endeavour to resolve the number of issues that are related to this, the Commission insisted that we meet in Casino to resolve all the problems on 15 December.
The Commissioner could neither have the Council accept those they had done anything wrong, nor have depa accept that we should stop publicising behaviour we think inappropriate. We have not published anything about Richmond Valley that is incorrect, going back to 2018 even, and we now have a better appreciation of the Council’s sensitivity. And members have a right to know the councils where we think our members are being treated unfairly. We've been doing that for more than a decade.
The best that could be agreed, with the Commissioner’s strong support, was that we weren't going to be able to agree on the past, so we should draw a line in the sand and start fresh. So, we are starting fresh. If the Council does what the Council has committed to, this will be the last time you read critical comments by us about they way they treat staff. Our rights are reserved.
There was general consensus on continuing training to enhance our member's skills, with plans to be put in place, with a bit of luck, this year.
And the winner is:
