July depaNews

“All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us”

What have the unions ever done for us?

Workers compensation

Occupational Health and Safety protections

Compulsory superannuation

35 hour week

RDOs and flexible working arrangements

Paid annual leave

Penalty rates/shift allowances

Overtime

Parental leave

Equal Pay

Paid sick leave

Public holidays

Long Service Leave

Redundancy protections and pay

Unfair dismissal protection

And yes, a few things from local government:

Councils pay for BPB accreditation

Protected leaseback cars

Obligations to introduce flexible work for parents/family

Obligations to consult on workplace changes

Protections in disciplinary procedures for both performance and behaviour management

Obligations to provide training

Obligations to provide reasons in writing for unsuccessful applicants

Protections against term contracts

Not a member, but would like to join? We have a delegate at every Council who would be delighted to assist or you can use this link.

Yes, it’s time to think about a log of claims for the 2017 Award.

Everyone would have received a 2.8% pay increase from the first pay period after 1 July (much more than the inflationary rate) and it is the last pay increase under the 2014 Award. Ordinarily the next pay increase would be 1 July 2017 and, even though that seems a long way off, the unions are starting to get together their logs of claims. The three unions are meeting this week to discuss the best way of proceeding and when we should start. And you can be sure that the miserable and punitive HR flunkies will be gearing up as well to influence LGNSW to do a whole range of horrible things.

The USU has their log of claims already and this is our invitation to members to think about changes you might like to see in the next Award.

We’ve gone hard on issues like ensuring that councils do provide flexibility for work and family purposes, and in the process we’ve had to deal with some really difficult councils (like Bathurst, for example) but things seem to have settled down across the industry in the last 12 months or so.

For the 2014 Award we had a fairly long list of issues. Many of these claims were successful and agreed with the other unions and LGNSW - they included requiring more consultation and less brow-beating by management in the consultative committee; a greater commitment to flexible working arrangements for parents and more of an obligation to facilitate these arrangements; family reunion leave for employees adopted under a “closed” adoption practice; increased paid adoption leave; requiring councils to continue BPB CPD requirements, even if the employee is on paid or unpaid leave during the year; a discretion for councils to provide health and well-being leave from sick leave; and on and on.

For an Award that has been made by consent of the parties nine times, that was good progress.

The next meeting of the Committee of Management will be held on Friday 12 August and the Committee will consider all ideas flowing in from members to develop our log of claims.

GM Brad CAM and the grumpy old bastards

Mid-Western GM Brad Cam was not a “person of interest” in the ICAC investigation, which began with a raid on the Council’s offices and the Mayor’s home in May 2014. This was an investigation affecting our members and which, amongst other things, saw the GM sack two of the directors and the subsequent departure of five of the senior people in the planning and environment area, as if from a sinking ship.

The ICAC has now decided that it will not go to public hearings. Instead, as they are able, they have provided a report to the Council under section 14-2 of the ICAC Act, and the “persons of interest” and it will be considered by the Council in closed session tomorrow. That section also requires that the report be provided to the relevant Minister, in this case Local Government Minister Paul Toole.

Mid-Western Regional Council will meet on Tuesday, 12 July to consider the confidential report, but the Notice placed in the paper by GM Brad Cam says only that the closed meeting is for “Consideration of Governance Matters relating to Council”.

The Mudgee Guardian hasn’t shown much interest in these proceedings and no interest at all in pursuing the unfair sackings, the way that the GM has accounted for the costs of the sackings and the significant legal costs, nor the departure of other staff to safer places but on this occasion the Guardian published that “council will discuss a report from the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) at a closed meeting on July 12. General Manager Brad Cam said that the councillors will consider a submission in relation to a potential report under section 14-2 of the ICAC Act.”

A little bit more specific than the obscure public notice.

But the meeting must start in open session before the councillors resolve to close it and the meeting is obliged to consider any submissions that may have been made before they do so. So, we made one and also sent it to all the councillors, the Office of the Minister for Local Government and to the Mudgee Guardian, just so they knew that there were reasons why the meeting should be open to the public and the Council should decide to release the ICAC’s Report.

Communities with councils that are undergoing an ICAC investigation deserve to have the ICAC’s final report published. To do otherwise hides behind an unacceptable cloak of secrecy and a restriction on good governance that only protects the guilty.

And if one or more of the three “persons of interest” is in the clear, why wouldn’t they want it published?