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Canterbury Council's general manager Jim Montague is spearheading a drive back to Victorian England by introducing new standards for communication amongst employees. Paralleling the genteelism of a previous era (and an ethnocentric focus on nice white Anglo-Saxons), when they preferred the word "unmentionables" to the word "underwear", Jim has decided that the words "attractive" and petite" are a breach of the Council’s Code of Conduct. And so is the expression "high maintenance". What the?
You can expect lots of potty-mouth employees having their mouths washed out by HR with this new standard.
We accept the view that a cultured and advanced society communicates in a cultured and sensitive way. Whether language is acceptable or unacceptable is usually in the eye of the beholder and fundamentally appropriate or inappropriate when it is placed in context.
Canterbury is caught up and confused about language. There are some contexts that come with a language warning. Without pandering too much to stereotypes, the language used out on the road in a gang is generally stronger than that used by professional employees. But professional employees are quite capable of getting down and dirty with the best of them, and it is appropriate if the context is right.
We just went through an exercise of an investigation of a member after a complaint was made at Canterbury. The area in which the member works was formerly housed in the depot where, regardless of sensitivities, it was all very blokey and outdoors. A move to the administrative centre at Belmore a couple of years ago saw our member, amongst others, issuing some guidelines about the new etiquette and the new context. Steps were taken regularly to ask the fruity communicators to take it outside.
depa would support any council that wanted to initiate an educational program to improve the quality of communication at work. It would be developed through the Consultative Committee, union reps on the Consulted Committee would be communicating with their members and when the new standards were introduced, everyone could get on board.
There could be a swear jar in every office. Gosh, what a great idea.
But the idea that a new standards is to be adopted, as it has at Canterbury, and then the new standard applied retrospectively, is fundamentally unfair. A bit like retrospectively imposing an 80 km speed limit in an area that was previously 100 km and then booking people who exceeded 80 when it was legal to do so. No one would think that acceptable.
Canterbury, we expect on poor HR advice, has decided that innocent and inoffensive words like "petite" and "attractive" breach those sections of the Code of Conduct which require sensitive dealings with each other. Simple words describing the physical appearance of people or things. We thought those sections of the Code were intended to deal with misogyny, racism, homophobia and prejudice, not words that we would happily use to our grandmother.
So, beware. While these new words are regarded as a breach of the Code for our particular member, the Council has not taken any steps to advise employees that they too may fall victim to the new regime. This is unfair and means that every employee of the Council is now at risk.
We are asking the Council to reconsider. We are also asking them to join together with a cooperative program to improve the quality of language and a place - an invitation extended more than a month ago and which was ignored at the time.
And while the Division of Local Government is busy reviewing the Code of Conduct to see whether is too prescriptive, or not prescriptive enough, we think they would be amused that management at Canterbury is trying to recreate a Victorian parlour with prim prigs, out and deal with ratepayers and applicants! That will be a culture shock.
In the meantime, as we ask the Council to reconsider this folly, it is time to revive "gosh" and "gee”, even though my mum more than half a century ago taught me that they were blasphemous and, when you think about it, this could even breach the Code as well. Just about the silliest thing we've seen in local government for many, many years.
You can vote on whether you agree in the poll on our site or there is more of a rant in Robbo's Pearls.
Sadly, things don’t seem to get any better at Greater Taree. A bad year last year with a clumsy investigation and the ambushing of staff in interviewing them, a strike by our members, some unpleasant and dishonest effects from the restructure carried out earlier in the year, and then squandering money on lawyers who would rather litigate than conciliate reasonable claims that could assist staff morale.
And then the Council resolved to knock off a gratuity policy for resigning employees that had been around nearly forever and in the face of the unanimous opposition of long-serving staff and their three unions. Charming.
And now having two unanimous recommendations from selection panels for new appointments overthrown by the senior managers. Why have a panel of people who know about the work and interview the candidates if you’re then going to reject their unanimous recommendation?
Our members are wondering what the point is of sitting on a selection panel if the director (called an executive leader there) and the GM, mercifully still called a GM, reject it. Neither of these managers hold any professional qualification in health, building or planning anyway.
There has been community unrest too as assessment times blow out. And they blow out because the Council isn’t serious about replacing people who go to better places. Even though it advertises a salary range that could attract suitable candidates, they refuse to appoint at above entry level. So they get no-one much, end up spending more money to fruitlessly advertise but with the same salary restrictions and 60% of the establishment staff end up carrying the load.
So morale plummets precisely because of management policies – something that seems to have escaped the Mayor who accepts that “staff morale could be better” but famously asserted to the Manning River Times that he ‘fully supports the senior staff in their actions to improve staff morale”. What the?
No-one we know at Taree, nor any of the officials of the other unions involved, have any idea what the mayor meant by that. We see the steps by senior management as being universally intending to sink morale even further.
Click here to see how the Manning River Times has reported our disagreement with the Mayor.
We think their explanation in the article about the two parts of the dispute really avoids the truth. We won’t say “lie” because we have already had a threat of defamation action made against us by the pugilistic Marsdens because we used the word “ambushed” over how management interviewed staff and then the IRC statement used the same word! Oh oh.
Two step increases are available under the rules of the salary system and the Council actually tried to change the rules banning more than one step and then apply that rule retrospectively to nail our member. I hope the judging panel for the Worst HR in Local Government Award remembers that one.
But it’s in relation to the comments made by the anonymous source at the Council that the real truth is avoided.
They said that the three displaced staff members “agreed to the change and retain their previous salary”. No, anonymous spokesperson, not quite.
They agreed to drop a level in the management restructure after receiving assurances from Executive Leader Ron Posselt that the jobs would be fundamentally the same as their old jobs and that would be demonstrated when PDs were prepared in the few months after the changes. Trust me, said Ron.
That was back in April/May last year and despite monthly requests for the PD to be prepared, they never were. Wonder why?
It’s all about whether the lesser job is of “comparable skill and accountability levels” like Posselt claimed or whether it’s not. And the Council has refused to respond to our exhibit in the dispute identifying 19 lost functions and responsibilities – as well as dropping one level in the organization.
And that doesn’t sound comparable to anyone outside the Council’s managers and their $3000 a day lawyer.
As an aside, we put no credence in the rumour that the forthcoming Local Government Association annual conference will be considering a recommendation that Greater Taree be stripped of the adjective “Greater”. While “Lesser” would more appropriately describe their commitment to the obligation in section 8 of the Local Government Act to “be a responsible employer”, we know that Greater simply describes the size of the Council post amalgamation. Like in the Great War being a biggie and not really being that much fun.
We do like the idea though of Greater Lakes City Council.
A consultative and pleasant day was had last week in Forster in response to an invitation to hear of Great Lakes Council’s proposed services review. Not a stripping and burning exercise like their northern neighbor but an attempt to review services properly and cooperatively with full sharing of information to all employees.
We had a meeting of members and that was attended by two members who had recently fled the war zone at Taree. And happy refugees they were too – the source of some amusement from other members because one in particular hadn’t stopped whistling on his way to and around work since he started. Someone had heard him whistling at lunchtime before the meeting.
There hasn’t been much whistling at Taree for a long while.
So what if employees at a good place get a taste of a dreadful place and those from a dreadful place could have a week or so somewhere where they were appreciated and not constantly a target by a stumbling and venal management?
So, our contribution to innovation in local government is a proposal to the general managers at both councils, Senor Gerard Jose at Greater (sic) Taree and Glen Handford at Great Lakes, for an employee exchange program.
So far not much interest but we understand quite a reaction from Jose. There are high hopes among staff he will apply for an exchange.
While we might be busy in local government trying to improve the standard of debate, intellectual discourse and the engagement of ideas based on context and facts -something sadly juxtaposed with the paucity of intellectual rigour at Canterbury - we can only look with horror at what masquerades as “debate” in the current debate about carbon.
A debate where one side accepts the overwhelming view of climate scientists and the other does not and where one side accepts the overwhelming view of economists that the reduction of carbon emissions requires some sort of carbon price and a market mechanism, the and the other side does not, it's hard not to despair.
And at a time when energy generation infrastructure is desperate for investment from reluctant investors who want only certainty.
And worse, at a time when according to Arctic scientists:
“ice at the North Pole has melted to the lowest level since satellite observations began in 1972, meaning the Arctic is almost certainly the smallest it has been for 8000 years”.
(P8 Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 13 September)
To make some sense of the debate if you don't already have a view, here are some links to documents on debunking myths about carbon supplied by the Climate Institute.
Job Losses
Major Economies
Environmental Outcomes
Australia A Big Polluter
Clean Energy Measures
(Please note my potential conflict of interest here as a member of the Climate Institute’s Strategic Council.)
Enjoy the debate and watch your mouth.
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