First the bad news
Part 1 Government removes workers comp for home to work travel
Finance Minister Pearce and Treasurer Baird celebrate the cuts
Look out driving to work, it is no longer covered by workers’ compensation.
Everyone is affected by the NSW Government’s changes that remove compensation for injuries that happen on the way to or from work from workers’ compensation coverage. With the support of the Shooters and the Nile Group in the Upper House, the Government has removed the historic protection available for injuries that only happen because you're on your way to or from work. Historically known as "journey claims", this is part of the Government’s attack on workers’ compensation.
While there have been other entitlements slashed and burned, this is the cutback that can affect everyone, every day.
An amendment in the Upper House has provided that accidents which are "incidental" to your work in travelling to or from work may be covered. No one really knows what this means - it draws on the South Australian legislation and the only example given to help understand its implications is a nurse travelling to work and doing a bit of nursing on the way.
Here is a link to a summary of the changes prepared by our solicitors NEW Law and as soon as it is clear what is "incidental", we'll let you know. You should presume the worst.
All we can be clear about at the moment is that if you start work in the field, you are not covered under workers’ compensation as you travel from home to the site but, because you have already started work, the remainder of your journey to your normal workplace is covered.
It's hard to see any logic other than cutting costs in removing journey claims when these claims cover accidents that only occur because someone is travelling to or from work.
The Division of Local Government is currently reviewing the Model Code of Conduct and back in July last year we made a submission. Now, having seen the proposed new Draft which has been circulated in the industry (but typically, the DLG didn't think it appropriate to send it to us) we think there's really only one problem.
But it's a big one.
The Division has proposed a new 6.4 (e) to require that employees must "ensure that any participation in political activities does not conflict with their primary duty to serve the Council in a politically neutral manner."
What? There is no "primary duty" for employees in the current Local Government Act requiring political neutrality (whatever that is), there is no definition of what "participation in political activities" means and the Division is unable to give any examples of the sort of behaviour that they think needs to be regulated with a provision like this.
It looks like everyone pretty much missed this provision but we didn't. Significantly, this proposal has been drafted by employees of the Crown and there is no comparable obligation imposed on them. What were they thinking? And, more importantly, what were they thinking at the same time that the Independent Review Panel is charged with the responsibility of making recommendations to create a more mature relationship between the State and local government?
It would also be potentially challengeable as a breach of an employee's human rights and any number of ILO conventions. This is what we said in our letter.
The Local Government and Shires Association, the United Services Union, the Local Government Engineers Association and depa have all agreed that any drug testing in local government should be done by saliva testing and not urine testing. This fundamental agreement underpins the finalisation of the industry's Alcohol and Other Drugs Policy and Procedure in the Industrial Relations Commission yesterday.
The Agreement recognises that saliva testing is both more effective in detecting impairment at the time of the test, more reliable in not producing false positives from legitimate medication and less intrusive into the privacy of employees because it detects impairment at the time of the test and not something that someone might have done two weeks ago.
For more than two years the employer organisations and unions have argued about, developed, trialled, argued again and finally resolved an agreed approach across the industry for those councils interested in introducing alcohol and other drugs policies. It has been at times acrimonious, threatening and uncooperative but it is now over and a good policy base has been created. And our role holding out against agreement between the employers and the USU supporting random testing and some other uncomfortable things has meant the development of a better policy.
Even the USU recognises this, with their representative in this process Steven Hughes, Manager of the Northern Division acknowledging "and in finalising this, the constructive amendments made by Robbo and Martin that allowed consensus to be reached." High praise indeed.
The agreed Policy sees our abandonment of opposition to random testing but only under agreed conditions. During the trial of the Industry Guidelines, the LGSA and the USU reached agreement (without discussion with either depa or the LGEA) that they wanted to see random testing across the industry. It would have been nice for the USU to have sat down with the other unions to tell us that they had abandoned our agreed position of quarantining random testing to those who had already tested positive, but they didn't.
But, like it or not, the LGSA and the USU wanted it and employees should arrive at work in a condition suitable for satisfying a random test anyway. It would have been nice for everyone to recognise that because the random testing regime during the trial didn't produce one positive test, we can properly conclude six months of random testing showed that there was nothing to detect and that the anti-drug zealots are the ones that need medication but no one wanted to do that either.
At least in the agreed Policy and Procedures we were able to have everyone recognise that there was no agreement about what the evidence showed during the trial. That will stop the misrepresenters and the boasters. This is a policy that should have been developed with less reliance on gossip, projection and supposition and more on evidence. The evidence leads to the inescapable inescapable conclusion that there was no discernible pattern on things like sick leave, access to EAPs, workplace accidents and incidents etc to support any argument that there was a deterrent.
But while our relationship with the LGSA continues to decline and it would have been preferable for the unions to be a little bit more cooperative, there have been some positives for us in this exercise and here are the ten big ones:
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If there is to be testing, it MUST be saliva testing.
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A policy will be developed at each Council from the industry policy, through the consultative committee, where the various testing regimes and options will be considered. This is something that the employers and the HR managers didn't want specified and where we couldn't get the LGSA to agree that the Consultative Committee "support" any policy.
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Prescription medication does not need to be declared before any test. This protects employees’ privacy because unrelated medication which can’t affect a test result now needn’t be declared.
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There is a recognition that there is no agreement of any evidence from the trial which means that those who argued that there was a deterrent effect were unable to establish this from proper evidence.
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We pulled the issue out of the clutches of the HR Group in the Hunter and restored it, to where it should have always remained, as something developed between the employer organisations and unions.
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We saw the Hunter Councils refusing to supply information to allow proper assessment of the trial and the costs and continuing to refuse that even when the Commission made an informal recommendation that they do so.
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We got a direction from Haylen J in the Industrial Relations Commission that the trial councils furnish evidence about costs, workplace injury figures, access to EAP, sick leave figures etc and once the information was provided, the LGSA and USU didn't press that there was evidence of a deterrent effect.
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The provision of this evidence, as a result of the recommendation from the Commission, revealed that the reasons why this shouldn't be provided in a stupid letter from Port Stephens GM Peter Gesling, were nonsense.
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The provision of this evidence, when it had been argued that this was "confidential", and the alleged confidential nature of the information wasn't pressed or protected when the evidence was provided, means that the Hunter Councils would say anything to hide the truth.
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We will never again have to run an individual dispute about the principles contained within the Policy.
In 2006 we initiated discussions with the LGSA and the other unions when we found that Kempsey had introduced random testing without telling anyone. We subsequently ran disputes with Hornsby, Sutherland and Wollongong about random testing and what is the appropriate PCA in breathalyser testing, and now, with these agreed principles, we won't have to do that anymore. It will mean that councils like Coffs Harbour, which think that they know better and that everyone should comply with the PCA of .02, will need to rethink because the Policy relies upon the RTA proscriptions.
And, it will be very hard now for those councils with a fetish for urine testing to not fall in line with the industry policy and procedures. Upper Hunter and Bogan will have to think again.
While the agreement has been reached, we asked the Commission to stand over the two disputes until October, just to see how the industry responded. As the purpose of both those disputes was to ensure that crazy people were kept under control, we need to make sure that is still happening. And, in a dazzling and disoriented in response, the LGSA didn't oppose this. The first thing we've ever asked for in this dispute that they agreed to without a fight.
As these policies are now obliged to be developed through the Consultative Committee, we will provide a document for our representatives on those Committees with the sorts of issues that should be debated. Like what did it cost the Councils in the trial (because some testing options are cheaper than others), what testing methods better target risk and why it’s a copout to introduce random testing hoping it picks up notorious employees with known alcohol and drug problems because that means councils ignore an acknowledged occupational health and safety risk.
And now for some good news
1 State Award varied
The State Award was varied by consent of the parties last week to provide increases in car allowances, meal allowances and training rates.
The changes are on our website now.
LGS has been committed to responsible and sustainable investment now for more than a decade. That commitment has seen LGS rated as Sustainable Super Fund of the Year, the top-rated fund in preparedness for investment in a low carbon future by the Climate Institute for successive years, winner of the Best Green Super Fund from Money Magazine and the winner of SuperRatings Infinity Award both in 2011 in 2012.
That commitment has driven improvements in the sustainability of the directly held property portfolio.
LGS owns 120 Sussex Street in Sydney - a 21-year-old office building which is the first CBD building in Australia to receive a 5½ star NABERS Energy rating. The upgrade of the building carried out by LGS reduced energy consumption by 54%, making it the lowest energy-intensive CBD building in Australia, as well as reducing water consumption by 46%.
This was done using leading Australian lighting, air conditioning and chiller technology, and the full upgrade was completed at a final cost of only $160 per square metre. These are the factors that drove the Property Council of Australia to provide this prestigious award to LGS. Anyone can build sustainable new buildings, the challenge is what to do with existing building stock.
Lower running costs, fully tenanted and more satisfied tenants means long-term sustainable returns for LGS members and the planet.
