August depaNews

The NSW Government has announced massive funding of training in local government. $252.2 million will be allocated to councils over the next six years to employ 1300 apprentices and trainees across the state. It is planned to be ready and available for school leavers at the end of this year.

This is delivering on an ALP election promise to provide funding to local government beyond the reach of individual councils. We note and appreciate the role of the USU in both the development of the policy and its delivery. Good job, Graeme.

This will train the next generation of skilled workers, keep jobs in local government and reverse the hostile trend of councils outsourcing jobs to contractors.

Contracting out is a poison across the industry, undermining permanent employment and putting many councils in breach of their obligations under the Local Government State Award to provide full-time permanent employment, and not replace permanent employees with contractors.

We pursued Wingecarribee in November 2021, citing their obligations to provide adequate staff and other resourcing. Then followed an extremely slow restructuring process, and a turnover of directors, one leaving instead of “committing career suicide” by participating in a process that wouldn’t be fully funded.

Our members revealed to a new director at a meeting in January that the Council had 18 external planning contractors with live DAs - yes, that’s not a typo, 18. Not just spending more money than would ordinarily be spent on full-time staff but requiring planning staff to manage and peer review work done by “consultants” who were often less experienced and qualified than they were. The new Director didn’t know the extent of the contracting and left as well.

The Government’s decision will assist in resolving this problem. Premier Chris Minns announced “this is the biggest state government investment in directly hiring new apprentices in recent memory and will play a critical role in building better communities across New South Wales.

From electricians and landscapers to plumbers and planners, these 1300 new apprentices and trainees will play a key role in building the homes and communities of our state’s future.

This investment will make a big difference in smaller towns and regional communities where fewer pathways for formal training currently exist.”

Minister Local Government Ron Hoenig said “Councils have been crying out for a solution to the looming skills crisis for years, but the previous government did nothing to address the problem.

“This funding will provide a much-needed boost for our councils which are responsible for providing the services and facilities communities use every day.”

The Minister said it would ensure councils were well equipped to build the infrastructure facilities and to support growing communities as part of the Government’s commitment to resolving the housing crisis.

The Minister for Skills, TAFE and Tertiary Education Steve Whan said, “a decade of neglect and cuts to the skills training in local government sector by the former government has resulted in an alarming shortage of skilled workers and no solutions until now to ensure the sustainability of this critical workforce.”

We don’t normally quote politicians like this, but for $250 million, we can make an exception.

And it’s great news for regional NSW.

It’s time to start thinking about what your community needs, and ensuring that your Council gets its act together to provide proper supervision and mentoring for trainees and apprentices on the program.

On 1 August, the new CEO at Shoalhaven City Council, Robyn Stevens, met with three Directors and told them she was restructuring and they would be terminated under their standard contracts and paid a redundancy. She provided organisation charts and details and followed this up with a slideshow for 30 or so managers that would see the new structure implemented on 4 November, and included even more organisational structures. No imprecision, a commitment that this would happen, and will happen by 4 November.

This is very unusual timing (potentially unprecedented) for a CEO to initiate a restructure so close to an election. The community will get a chance to vote on 14 September, and the caretaker period, where councils can’t do much prior to an election, starts in a week’s time.

More importantly, section 223 of the Local Government Act makes it abundantly clear that it is the Council’s responsibility to resolve the structure, not the GM/CEO.

There are two potential breaches of the Local Government Act here - section 223 prescribing the Council’s right to determine the structure after consulting with the GM, and providing that establishing the structure is the responsibility of the Council, and section 337 requiring the Council to be consulted on the dismissal of senior staff.

In neither the meeting with the directors who will be sacked, nor with the 30 managers, did the CEO and slides acknowledge the Council’s role in determining the structure, nor in the termination of senior staff.,

A week later, on 8 August she issued an email to all staff under her signature and with the subject “Proposed change of operating structure”, proposing a new structure of four directorates, consolidated functions, and “the disestablishment” of City Development, City Lifestyles and City Futures. Clearly written by someone unfamiliar with HR practices and restructuring, the GM says “I have proposed a new structure for the organisation”. The word “proposal” and the advice that “Consultation has now commenced” made it clear  this was happening, whether people liked it or not.

The Award establishes a “pre-proposal” period and a “proposal” period, with different requirements. Neither term was used to clarify how this workplace change would roll out and this put everyone on the back foot. We emailed the Council saying that we hadn’t been advised as we were required to under the Award, to receive a phone call from HR, valiantly putting to us that although not specified in the communication, it was intended to be a “pre-proposal”. With a proposal to follow…

Given that the proposal is the GM’s own, and that there are documents with organisation charts identifying what will be merged and things that might disappear, that seems odd. And it seems even more odd that in the slide showing the process, 14 October is a step identified as “Seek approval from CEO”.

And what all that means, is the CEO has designed her operational structure and is proposing it, there will be consultation and then the CEO will approve it! This only falls short of the abject stupidity at Hawkesbury last year, when a Director made a complaint against the behaviour of a member, investigated the complaint herself, and then found that it was not sustained!

We’ve been told by HR that even though it wasn’t said, it was intended to be a “pre-proposal” period, so we can all relax. It’s hard to relax when we know that there are documents already prepared, so we won’t.

The confusing email should be reissued, no one understands it, and it’s creating the sort of concern it suggests should be the subject of professional counselling, “if needed”!

The timing with the election, the apparent belief that this will be implemented by 4 November, will require a new Council - half the councillors are not seeking re-election which has significant implications for a change – to make a fundamental decision about the new structure, when they won’t have any idea about the current structure. The CEO must think she has a better hope with this Council, than the next one.

Yesterday a Notice of Motion was lodged for the next council meeting, “That the CEO be requested to withdraw any proposed changes and potential redundancies and hold the planned restructure of Directorates until after the New Council has been installed and consulted.”

Hear, hear!

Ten CEOs sacked by the same Mayor in eight years, a current investigation into the Council by OLG, a damning report, legal action by the Council to prevent it continuing and a Minister for Local Government determined to conduct a public investigation of the Council and put in an administrator.

The OLG Interim Report being contested by the Council found maladministration, nepotism, poor financial decisions and concerns about destroyed documents as part of the investigation.

Still, it’s surprising the Council is refusing to answer the relatively simple questions we have asked.

Built as a public project in Liverpool’s CBD, the Council’s Liverpool Civic Place is a 10 storey building and library, car park, intended to accommodate a good proportion of the Council staff. Normally, a decision by Council to build its own Administrative Centre, follows public consultation, and, in its fit out, significant input from staff to ensure optimum working conditions for the future.

Not so at Liverpool. Whether it’s the rapid turnover of CEOs, sacked by the Mayor under the senior staff contract, or whether there are secrets that really can’t be revealed, we thought we were asking pretty straightforward questions. There was no consultation with staff who were provided four weeks’ notice of moving into premises that they were only then allowed to inspect. And they were unsuitable. Massive, shared desks, described as either “workbenches” or “dining tables”, intended to seat eight employees, four a side, knees knocking, no room, with an impenetrable barrier of computer screens down the middle, like some dystopian fantasy. No shading or sun protection from the westerly sun, no parking on-site, which for EHOs and building surveyors doing inspections twice a day, 25 minutes or so walking time between the office and the car park. Hopeless.

The current acting CEO has agreed to spend more public monies removing the workbenches, replacing them with individual sit/stand desks, some undertakings about screening, not yet installed and summer is approaching, and still no solution to the car parking.

Described by the Acting Chief People Officer as “extensive consultation with staff from the inception of the project to completion” the only internal communications the Council could provide were those dated from 14 February this year about the impending move, but they included the critical date of 26 March 2024, when employees saw the site for the first time, before moving in on 6 April.... Seven days’ notice, into a poorly thought out and off the shelf design that satisfied no-one.

We tried to explain the concept of consultation to the acting CEO Jason Breton, who responded “Council will not engage in any further dialogue about the past relocation to Scott Street”. When we responded, he asked to be referred to when he had said that...

So we filed a GIPA application, which is being processed. In the meantime we were told the decisions about how the floor would be laid out and designed were made by a previous ELT - meaning person or persons unknown - and that the current Directors were shown the floors when they were already fitted with furniture and computer connections and everything else, and asked to choose their own floor!

That’s more than we had been told, but there is a public interest here and it shouldn’t be confidential. If it was designed and resolved by the Mayor, they should say so, if it was designed by the building company which was doing everything, then someone must’ve signed off on that being the process. Who was it?

And who was responsible for the decision to leave employees in the dark until days before they were forced to move in?

In our February issue, under the heading “He said what?” we reported on a developing fiasco at MidCoast where a Councillor had asked whether three things reported in the Golden Turd issue of depaNews were true.

Councillor Peter Epov asked, “can the GM confirm that depaNews, for the second year in succession, conferred the ‘Golden Turd Award’ to MidCoast” and whether the claims were correct that “MidCoast Council has had 300 resignations in the past 12 months, as stated in the last report to the Consultative committee” and “Almost 500 of council’s USU (United Services Union) members meeting and rejecting the proposal to the salary system proposed by MCC with not one person supporting them?”

The Council has never told us that those things were untrue, we still believe they are true, but the GM had responded that the matter was confidential due to “personnel matters concerning particular individuals (other than Councillors)” even though the question sought whether the allegations were correct, yes or no, and made no reference to any individual personnel matters.

When the Councillor ignored the inappropriate gag, a Code of Conduct complaint was made against him, the Conduct Reviewer found Epov guilty, he crowd-funded an appeal to the Supreme Court, he won, and the Council was a loser, in more ways than one.

Here is an article in the Daily Telegraph on 28 June and an article in the Newcastle Herald on 4 July when the Council lost the Supreme Court case.

If you were a creative, writing a television satire about local government, you could include this without embellishment. MidCoast is the gift that keeps on giving.