September depaNews

Special quarantine issue:

No politicians, no pretenders, no disappointers, no fizzers, no grubs, no spivs, no opportunists, no careerists, no misspeakers (no one saying “I misspoke”), no liars, no wankers, no rent seekers, no payment-for-comment dopes, no snouts in the trough parasites, no born to rule fantasists, no living high on the public purse abusers...

Just some good old-fashioned news.

The three local government unions – the USU, depa, and the LGEA (left to right pictured above) - and LGNSW on behalf of councils across the state, are about to start negotiating the 2017 Local Government State Award. Yes, we know it seems a long time before the next pay increase, when it would normally apply, from 1 July, but this is a process a bit more complicated than it looks.

First, LGNSW drags through a festering group of HR Managers, some GMs, some Directors of Corporate Services to see what they would like to have negotiated in the next Award. This can’t be a pleasant experience for them, and collectively, our hearts go out to them. There will be slashers and burners aplenty in this exercise - some still smarting from not being happy about the potential to take a couple of days from sick leave for the health and well-being, or time off to try and find your natural parents if you’re a closed adoption, “will anyone have any time for work?” (two of our claims from the last award negotiations) and they will want to go hard again. Strip it back, back to the 50s.

And the unions have canvassed their members (thanks to those members of ours who responded to the invitation) and a timetable has been set by the President of the IRC (probably one of the last things he does before he ascends unto the Supreme Court with a heavenly chorus) and this will see the employers’ organisation and the three unions exchanging logs of claims on Monday 12 September.

This time, the three unions will consolidate claims that we have in common to make the process a bit more efficient and effective and, as always, we have tried to be realistic in developing our own log of claims. After all, the State Award was made by agreement between the parties in October 1991 and, apart from a little bit of private arbitration and pressure exercised by members of the Commission to get us to reach agreement on different bits and pieces, the successor awards over the last quarter of a century have all been made by agreement between the parties.

Here is a link to the claims signed off by the depa Committee of Management to be part of the joint unions’ claim or, if we’re the only ones interested in them, to be pushed by us alone. I would expect, because if there’s one thing a union official knows about it’s the concept of solidarity, we will provide a united and compelling front on our claims.

The timetable set by the Commission will have the logs exchanged next week, a listing for a report in the Commission the following day; a deadline of 10 October for the parties to exchange amended logs of claim; a report back on 13 December and then a series of compulsory conferences in March and May to resolve any outstanding issues. This is a program that should allow plenty of time for us to consult with members about what we end up with in the negotiations to continue our long and proud history of an agreed approach between the unions and the employers in the industry.

On 1 September we were part of a deputation of affiliates of Unions New South Wales to be consulted by bureaucrats from the Department of Industrial Relations and Justice on the government’s decision to dismantle the IRC - splitting it in two and sending the Industrial Court and the current President of the IRC off to the Supreme Court. We covered this in our last issue.

(Be patient, we’ll get to Humpty Dumpty in a minute.)

The meeting was opened by the Director-General of the Department of Industrial Relations who described the Brief to Stakeholders on the integration of the Industrial Court into the Supreme Court as a “proposal”. This was a surprise to everyone as the word “proposal” didn’t appear anyway in the brief and we all understood what we were being presented with was a fait accompli, that it would happen whether we liked it or not, that it would happen whether it made any good sense or not, and all they really wanted from us was seven answers to seven specific questions about functional and machinery issues to try to make the transition easier.

We hate the idea of breaking down an historic, venerable and respected institution and fear for the longevity of the remaining five members of the Commission and their staff. We know, in a digital age, that a group that small can pretty much be bundled up, metaphorically and literally, and sent anywhere. And as many of us occasionally work from our cars, we may see them driving around in a Tarago or some other suitably sized people-mover in the years ahead.

We hope not.

Here is a link to the submission we lodged on 5 September. The Government provided less than a fortnight for anyone with an interest to make a submission and, really, why would they dignify a process which is nothing more than telling us what they’re going to do, like it or lump it?

It was acknowledged by the bureaucrats on 1 September that Cabinet had already decided to do this, although they were coy about responding to our questioning of when it happened. We reckon it happened a year or so ago, but they told us Cabinet confidentiality meant they couldn’t tell us. Clearly that’s a furphy, we can understand that they can’t tell us what happened in Cabinet, but should be able to tell us when Cabinet decided to do something. Shouldn’t they?

We were inspired in preparing our submission by Humpty Dumpty’s famous line from Through the Looking Glass, “When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.” It’s not really a question of integrating the Court, it’s a question of disintegrating the Commission.

And phew, that must’ve come very close to breaching the quarantine.

Who’s pulling these clowns’ strings?

The State Award provides that all councils have to establish a consultative committee and that the committee must have minimum representation from the three unions party to the Award. An opportunity exists for agreement to be reached locally for a Committee to be expanded to ensure that it is “representative of the employer’s workforce” and sometimes that agreement has been reached locally, and sometimes it hasn’t.

The Unions have historically been opposed to non-union members being represented (they don’t want to participate in the regulation of the workforce anyway) and often councils have claimed that the union representatives don’t properly represent the workforce but haven’t been able to establish whether that is true or not. Usually, it’s just said to allow councils to find some compliant people who won’t be any trouble.

One of the problems with the potential election of people as a “workplace representative” who may not be union members is that they have nowhere to get advice on the complicated and vexed issues that are the staple diet of the consultative committee. And if they don’t have friendly union officials to ring for advice, what do they do? Well, what they usually do is ask the boss, or HR, or suck up to the GM or something like that, and that doesn’t make an effective workplace representative at all.

The three unions have now reached agreement on a Joint Statement to assist our local delegates make a judgement about whether or not they should agree to expand membership of the committee because someone reckons that it’s not properly “representative” of the workforce. Let’s face it, there is not one job in local government, where the employee can’t belong to one, or sometimes more, of the three unions.

The provision of the Joint Statement will make it easier for our local representatives to say no. And it squarely puts the onus on the employer to establish that the existing union representation is not representative.