Ignore Henny Penny, there has been progress in State Award negotiations

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Published: Tuesday, 29 November 2016 13:04

Poor old Henny Penny, an acorn dropping from an oak tree onto the poor chook’s head sent her off into an hysterical panic that “the sky is falling”..  It wasn’t of course, it was simply drawing the wrong conclusion.  Dopey chook.

With the logs of claims of LGNSW for the employers and the three unions exchanged in September, there have already been four days of constructive discussions. In parallel, we had one separate meeting between the parties with Mastertek, the experts on the job evaluation system, arising from a claim we made about updating the Local Government Job Evaluation System and with a follow-up on the job evaluation issue next week.

It’s important to remember that the Local Government Job Evaluation System, usually referred to as 00-Soft (which is just the name of the software) or Wyatt, which was the originator of the system back in the 1990s built with the cooperation of LGNSW and the three unions.  It would be good to keep that cooperation and the experts involved in the 90s through this process.

depa’s claims were dealt with on the second day of negotiations and now the three unions and the LGNSW have all run through their claims.  Given that the State Award was made by consent of the parties in late 1991, and has been varied by agreement ever since (with some assisted conciliation from the IRC when necessary) our clear expectation is that the 2017 Award will be made by agreement as well.

But there is one claim in the Employers’ Log which has Henny Penny on the run.  That’s their claim 13 which proposes to delete clause 18A(ii) providing the 35 hour week for salaried and professional staff.

Back in September, when we dealt with the commencement of these discussions in depaNews, we referred to the consultative group that LGNSW is obliged to talk to as “a festering group of HR Managers, some GMs, some Directors of Corporate Services”.  Clearly they’re not all that bad but no one should be surprised to see reactionaries, those who would have your kids working down the mines for 18 hours a day or staff working for bugger all as part of this group and no one should be surprised that the log of claims will contain things that are never, ever, ever, ever going to be agreed.  Is that enough evers?  Just to be clear, it’s never, ever, ever, ever.

And the claim to remove the 35 hour week is one of them.  Apart from anything else, 35 hour week employees have a different hourly rate to anyone working a 38 hour week, so that if there were to be changes, that hourly rate would be protected and the employees would get three extra hours pay.  The machinery and consequences of this have not yet been discussed even though the unions have pushed LGNSW for an explanation of the implications. 

More importantly, since the Award was made in 1992, there has been a capacity to have Council agreements signed with the unions where employees would make arrangements to agree to work 38 or 40 hours a week for an additional payment - not usually the overtime penalty, but something better than single time, which was embraced by employees who tended to work those additional hours anyway.

Since that time there has been a reduction in these arrangements as councils withdraw from the flexibility available in the Award and just try to crack the whip a bit harder on existing staff and force additional work and hours without proper payment of compensation. 

We all know that you don’t get everything you put in a log of claims, and if you want to get a bet on about something that won’t proceed, get a bet on against the removal of the 35 hour week.

Tell them they’re dreamin’.

depa’s prestigious HR Awards will be announced next month

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Published: Tuesday, 29 November 2016 13:04

As much awaited by those responsible for human resources management in councils as our members, this is an exciting time of the year for those who haven’t been doing the right thing.

We’ve always taken the view that calling out those with the worst HR will improve the standard of HR management in the industry and it looks like this year, after 12 nominees last year, there has been a significant outbreak of good behaviour in the industry.

Councils like Cumberland and Inner West when they had the opportunity to do the wrong thing in standardising grant days over Xmas New Year chose the opportunity to do the right thing - providing to Marrickville employees the days off that were the entitlement of those at Ashfield and Leichhardt, and the entitlements at Holroyd to those at Auburn.  Good work by both the administrators and the Interim General Managers at both those merged organisations.  And, there you are, something nice in depaNews about Viv the Vivisector, and who would have thought that would ever happen.

Viv May is good bloke

Yesterday we received a clause 39 letter from Parramatta City telling us that they have created nine (9) additional full-time permanent positions within the Regulatory Service Unit.  And we expect a similar letter creating new planner positions very, very soon. 

Despite all this good behaviour and positive developments at these councils, we have three candidates already busy out there setting astonishingly poor examples on things like denying natural justice during an investigation, failing to look after the health and well-being of staff in an open and public way and one council which hasn’t been the subject of a dispute yet, but will surely be in the New Year, after a long history of under-resourcing, disrespect and mistreatment of staff.

Our special December HR issue will be out in the week commencing Monday 19 December.

BPB gets their fingers out on what should happen with PINs

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Published: Tuesday, 29 November 2016 11:25

Now that the BPB has cleaned up the vast backlog of complaints against private certifiers, they have finally got their act together to flesh out processes for the issuing of PINS against accredited certifiers - whether they be private certifiers or accredited Council employees.

In October they released advice on the Penalty infringement notices and a PINs policy and procedure titled “Issuing of penalty infringement notices to accreditation holders: Policy and procedures”. 

The BPB has had the power since 2009 or so to issue penalty infringement notices for a variety of offences.  Those offences are all listed in the Building Professionals Regulation 2007 (effective 2009) and the relevant sections of the BPB Act where penalty notices can be issued are sections 58(2), 60(1) and (2), 61(1), (2) and (3), 64(2), 66(1), 72, 73, 74 (1) and 85 (1).

Before anyone gets too excited, as far as we are aware there have been neither any investigation, nor any finding against council accredited staff despite Council employees being accredited since 2008/2009.  That doesn’t surprise us, we know that Council employees do a good job and that the backlog of complaints were all private certifiers with less interest in disclosure, record keeping, proper process and managing conflicts of interest.

Members who are accredited with the BPB need to see these documents and be aware of the risks.  Not all of those sections apply to Council employees - for example, while councils are obliged to provide insurance under section 63, if the Council decided no longer to insure them, accredited employees are obliged under section 61 to notify the Board.  Well, durr. 

While we hate the system of accreditation of council staff, because it creates parallel accountability with an employee’s employer as well as the Board, because of the absence of any investigation or penalty being imposed on Council employees, it’s been hard to argue that there should be an allowance paid by the employer for the additional accountability and risk. 

Since 2010 in the Award we have had leave reserve provisions to allow us to argue “to vary the Award consistent with the principles of the Industrial Relations Commission of New South Wales in relation to the accreditation of employees by the Building Professionals Board” but because we have no evidence of any additional accountability beyond the simple process of accreditation, or the risks associated with reduced accreditation levels or penalty notices for offences, because nothing like that has happened, it remains as a leave reserved provision.

We regularly have to tell members that we can only get some action happening in this area if the BPB slammed a council employee, reduced their accreditation level or fined them - giving us some real evidence of the downside of BPB accreditation so that we can actually do something about it. 

But we’d rather have no evidence, wouldn’t you?  Or a non-member of ours getting slammed, would be perfect.

Nevertheless, we haven’t met with the BPB for a long time and it makes sense for us to do so early in the New Year for a catch up.

A facade, is always just a facade...

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Published: Thursday, 27 October 2016 12:24

The website Modern Heritage Matters defines Facadism as usually referring to “the trend towards preserving the facade of an historical building while erecting new buildings behind or around it.” It’s something that gives a nod to history, or legitimacy, but which hides something else. Like a movie set or a faux consultative mechanism established by Government to placate aggrieved organisations under the impression they were being genuinely consulted.

There is no doubt that the Government’s construction of the Employment Matters Reference Group is a facade aimed at hiding practices quite contrary to the espoused intention behind its construction.

The question for us is how much longer we are prepared to put up with participating in something where the Government itself doesn’t comply with its own Terms of Reference.

We exposed DPC for not distributing the fortnightly Stronger Councils Stronger Communities Status Update (covering 11 July to 24 July) by distributing the document to members of the Reference Group when DPC had failed to do so. The document dealt with a whole range of employment issues and how progress was being made in the merged councils in weeks 9 and 10 after the proclamations and, by any measure should have been distributed every fortnight to the Reference Group.

But when it was argued at the next meeting of the Reference Group that we should have this information, all the DPC would say was that they would have a “conversation” with the Minister for Local Government, because it was his call whether we should see copies. DPC chose to do nothing in the time between us distributing the document and the next meeting of the Reference Group and if they really needed to have a conversation with a bloke more interested in transparency than they are, they should have had it before we all met. It was like getting blood from a stone.

In the end it was agreed that we would get it, but we haven’t had all of them, we weren’t consulted when it went to a monthly rather than a fortnightly report, nor on the template proposed to measure progress, nor on the secret documents containing “cost savings” targets, nor on pretty much anything else.

Given the cloak of secrecy under which the Reference Group operated, it’s hard to be too explicit, but suffice to say there has been no attempt to properly refer matters, nor to consult on a range of things including employment templates; OLG’s decision not to continue investigations into councillors with code of conduct complaints now they were no longer councillors after a merger; the seemingly fruitless and repeated requests for a list of facilitators working for DPC “assisting” councils comply with the Government’s requirements, and that after they did disclose the facilitators, a further one was recruited and that wasn’t disclosed either; complaints emails unanswered and then, yesterday, to find that the Local Government Reform Program Status Report to the end of September had been circulated last week but again, not to the Reference Group.

The continued failure to distribute the Status Report must surely be the last straw.

DPC is the problem here. Seemingly incapable of understanding the concept of what should be referred to the Reference Group, they are also incapable of responding to things like the twelve specific questions in our letter to the Minister for Local Government on the “savings targets” and the two undertakings we have repeatedly sought to allow us to determine whether we should continue to legitimise this facade or whether it will genuinely become a Reference Group to which things are referred by the Government and consulted upon.

You’ve got our letter to the Minister with the twelve questions, the two undertakings we are seeking are:

• DPC and OLG will provide all information that falls within the Terms of Reference of the Reference Group, in the broadest terms, electronically, to members of the Reference Group between meetings or, if the timeframe is acceptable, at the meetings, and
• the templates already circulated in the industry, purporting to formalise a transfer of employees who were employees at the time of the proclamations be withdrawn by OLG.

When DPC replied on behalf of the Minister for Local Government in response to our twelve questions, they replied with a broad summary of what they have been doing and didn’t address the twelve questions, one-by-one, as they should have. DPC will argue that in their own obscurantist way they covered off on most of it but there is absolutely no doubt they didn’t answer the question, “why didn’t DPC and OLG consult with the unions on targets that are specifically derived from salary savings and workforce efficiencies prior to reaching agreement with individual councils?”

The next meeting of the Reference Group is scheduled to be held on 29 November. Whether we remain members to attend that meeting will depend on the Government’s response to legitimate concerns about the functioning of the Reference Group and the Government’s own commitment to its Terms of Reference.

Despite the hypocrisy, the Group has assisted in opening doors into OLG and we do have issues about things like the employment provisions of the Act, what to do about senior staff now that the SES has transitioned public servants off term contracts and other issues that mean we should keep the communication channels open. But at what price…

Government dismantles Industrial Relations Commission

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Published: Thursday, 27 October 2016 11:47

Heavenly chorus waiting ...

It was always going to be a sad day if the integrated Industrial Court and Industrial Relations Commission were torn apart and that happened on 12 October when the Industrial Relations Amendment (Industrial Court) Bill passed both through both houses of the NSW Parliament.

While it seems likely that early December will see the ascension of the President of the IRC the Hon Justice Michael Walton to the Supreme Court we know that his ascension will be accompanied by a heavenly chorus and the sort of welcome he deserves.

No appointment has been made yet to the newly created position of Senior Commissioner, who will preside over the other four members of the remainders of the IRC, so if the President is ascending in five or so weeks, they had better hurry up.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s 130-year-old fig trees planted to commemorate the Anzacs, or Federation houses to make way for WestConnex, or a more than a century old venerable and esteemed institution, there is just something the Premier doesn’t like about the start of the 20th century.

We stop Government’s secret processes in merged councils

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Published: Thursday, 27 October 2016 11:47

The Government, principally the Department of Premier and Cabinet, has an unsavoury history of keeping things confidential in the merging of councils that should be public, or at the very least, available to Council staff and their unions.

From a politically-motivated early proclamation to get the ball rolling (forced through Cabinet by the Premier in the face of others wanting to delay the amalgamations until after the Federal election) everyone was on the back foot and, despite the best endeavours of the unions, there were still those in Government committed to keeping all the important stuff secret. Particularly the Government’s performance measures for the newly merged entities, the reporting mechanisms that were being sent to each Council to ensure compliance with this dictated regime and process, and top secret “savings targets”.

In our June issue we announced the operations of the Employment Matters Working Party.  We thought, as did LGNSW and the other unions, that this was a positive development, reflecting an acknowledgement by the Government that the local government unions and employers knew what they were doing and had got it right for decades, and it made sense for the Government to consult and learn from those who knew what they were doing.

By the time we’d announced it, the Reference Group, as it was subsequently known, had met four times but there quickly emerged a reluctance by Government to tell us what was going on. Despite our helpful role at the first meeting back on 18 April to fix poorly drafted documents (not being specific, because the cloak of secrecy extends to the functioning of this mysterious secret group) with a turnaround of 24 hours.

We accepted that the politically-motivated announcement meant that neither DPC, nor OLG, were ready and were chasing their tails to catch up.

But despite the Terms of Reference of the Reference Group acknowledging that “the primary purpose of the Employment Matters Reference Group is to identify and advise on matters impacting on the statutory and policy framework governing employment by councils”, DPC representing Government was reluctant to commit in the same way that LGNSW and the three unions were committing to the functioning of the body. Yes yes yes, we’ll keep it all confidential but you people have to do something as well.

We found out more about what the Government was doing with timeframes and targets and cost savings by documents mysteriously appearing in our office, clearly marked “Confidential – Not for Distribution”, but having significant effects on employment in the industry. We asked, when we saw media about immediate cost savings already realised, how were those figures obtained? No response, so lucky for us that some kind person sent us the first document of the Governments KPIs and how each of the merged councils compared to them.

We helpfully forwarded that to the members of the Employment Matters Reference Group and now that document, prepared on a monthly basis from fortnightly data, was provided by DPC to all members of the Reference Group. But, when this became monthly reporting, the proposed template was not referred to anyone for input despite the employment issues contained within it and, no one knew anything at all about how “cost savings” had been identified for each merged Council, what those anticipated cost savings were, both immediately and over a longer term, and how those cost savings were proposed to be delivered. Again, some helpful person provided a copy of this to us, but it was still not raised with the Reference Group.

So, not being fond of governments committing to transparent processes and then not delivering on that commitment, nor governments establishing Reference Groups or consultative mechanisms, and neither referring things, nor consulting properly, we did something about it.

We wrote to the Minister for Local Government with twelve questions about the “cost savings” targets. Clearly if the Government labelled everything “Confidential - Not for Distribution”, then councils were being prevented from disclosing that information to people who should be told. In particular, because these proposed cost savings and activities had an impact on employment, and in a way that fitted within the definition of “significant effects” under clause 39 Workplace Change and Redundancy, then the Council was at risk of breaching their obligations under the Award.

Then we wrote to the 19 Interim General Managers giving them until midday Friday to agree to disclose to us the documentation they all possessed from the DPC containing their “cost savings” and how those cost savings were to be realised - invariably by reducing staff.

For us, this was setting up a win:win scenario - either the Government agreed the documents that were marked “Confidential – Not for Distribution” would have that confidentiality and embargo lifted, or we would file an industrial dispute pursuing the Councils for not disclosing things that were happening, which would have “significant effects” on employees and the councils were not advising the employees affected, nor the unions to which they belong, as they are obliged to do under clause 39.

And when we filed a dispute we would press the Commission to stick it up the Government for putting councils in this position. It was hard to choose which of these possibilities would be better. Or more fun.

So, on Wednesday 6 October, the day before the deadline on the 19 councils, DPC emailed all the interim general managers making reference to our requests and agreeing that the documents could be disclosed to whomever the Council wanted. Just what we wanted - although it’s hard not to be a bit disappointed that we couldn’t charge our way into the IRC, with the 19 merged councils gagged by the Government, and seek the Commission’s support to remove the gag. Not a good look for a Government and a Premier increasingly on the nose.

You can see our letter to the Minister and our pro forma to the IGMs here but the email exchanges between DPC, from Steve Orr, Executive Director, Local Government Reform, and depa make even more interesting reading. We are still not sure how much of that we can publish under the agreed Terms of Reference.  Why we honour those Terms and the Government doesn’t, does make you wonder …

Who would have thought! Private certifiers need better regulation …

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Published: Thursday, 27 October 2016 11:23

The Government’s response to the Independent Review of the Building Professionals Act 2005 was released in September. If you are accredited by the BPB, you should have a look at it.

150 recommendations and a significant number of them about the integrity of the system and anxieties about the conflict of interest of a developer paying for their own certifier.

The Government has committed to tightening up fire safety - principally responding to failures in the private certification that resulted in the September 2012 Bankstown apartment block fire.

Someone should have mentioned the inherent conflict of interest to Government back in the 1990’s when that boofhead Craig Knowles introduced the system!

Tamworth GM drops off on removing the nine day fortnight from existing staff

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Published: Wednesday, 26 October 2016 10:48

We’d hate to be misunderstood. We don’t necessarily target general managers who become the president of the Local Government Managers/Poseurs Association. There is a natural attraction, of course, of putting a target on general managers who spend time attacking the provisions of the Local Government State Award - whether that be to slash entitlements or costs or under the guise of advocating better management practices and getting all excited about management excellence.

But it’s always interesting to see how general managers, who do think it important to try to exercise some leadership role in LGM/PA, behave at their own Council. Does it follow that they demonstrate management excellence when they have the opportunity to do so themselves?

depa filed a dispute with Tamworth Regional Council late last year after GM Paul Bennett decided to strip away the nine day fortnight from existing staff.

We challenged him to provide any evidence that the nine day fortnight had compromised Council services. Staff had cooperatively managed it to ensure no loss of services and we were sceptical that there was any evidence to the contrary. Paul was unable to provide any evidence at all, deciding instead to have Dorothy Dix prepare a survey to local developers. Despite the survey’s prejudicial questioning and encouragement of responses that they couldn’t do business with the Council on Fridays on Mondays, he couldn’t get any evidence that way either.

But Paul is as sensitive to criticism as he is to employees not jumping and doing want he wants. He responded dramatically to our report on his treatment in the Commission in the February issue - blowing more than $15,000 by our guess on having a Senior Counsel attend for a less than one hour conference in Newcastle to have the union chastised. The GM, the deputy GM, the HR Manager all attended, all away from Tamworth for the day and obviously not providing services but happily supporting the SC trying to ban depa’s Secretary from continuing to appear in proceedings, to be locked in the stocks etc but all he got from the Commission, even with his SC, was the Commission’s agreement to something that depa had asked for on the very first occasion - namely, that subsequent proceedings be held in Tamworth.

While Paul might be sensitive to criticisms we might make, he isn’t very sensitive to what’s happening amongst his staff.

On 14 August he emailed all staff, (without the courtesy of a copy to us as the notifying union or the other unions) that the “Executive Management Team has now decided not to pursue the transitioning of individual staff away from current work arrangements.”

Sounds like the white flag going up to me. He continued that “our organisation is in a rebuilding phase following the service review process and I would prefer not to pursue the transition of existing staff to a 19 day month due to the impact it is having on our culture.”

Well, durr. Almost 12 months after the first letter telling the unions that he was removing the nine day fortnight, he suddenly realised he shouldn’t try to strip away the nine day fortnight “due to the impact it is having on our culture.” Well done Paul, it’s about time that sunk in. How could he not have anticipated that stripping away the nine day fortnight would have a negative impact on their culture?

You can’t take away an historic entitlement without evidence for doing so, nor can you attempt to bludgeon it through the consultative committee and behave in such a way to our delegate that you subsequently provide an apology.

And even though, in capitulating because it was damaging the culture, he reserved the opportunity of dealing with the area of development control slightly differently - “with an investigation into the specific issues our customers identifies a problem in that area.” Remember here that he hasn’t been able to sustain that their customers identify any problems in the development area. A little bit too much playing the player, and not the ball here.

It was a messy, embarrassing and clumsy process with conflicting messages, clarification the Council didn’t want to remove the nine day fortnight from all staff but they needed five weeks or so to work out those it did, and then five weeks later revealing it did want to remove it from everyone, etc. etc. To call it a farce, flatters it.

Now, not with a bang but a whimper, Paul has run up the white flag. This process won’t win him any LGM/PA awards for excellence in HR management.

Victories don’t come much sweeter than this one.

Something to put a smile on your faces - we may have found local government’s dumbest

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Published: Wednesday, 26 October 2016 10:31

There will be no way you can deduce from this report who we are talking about but sometimes the ignorance and lack of worldliness of some people beggars belief.

Ever heard the expression, “the blinding light on the road to Damascus”? Of course you have, how could you not.

If you Google it, because you’re not sure and it’s always better to check before you make a goose of yourself, you will go through 50 screens and still not find a link to anything other than the famous conversion story in the Christian Bible of Saul to Paul, who allegedly saw a blinding light and, literally, saw the light.

When we say 50 screens, that’s as far as we got before we simply gave up. But as we went through them one by one thinking there might be some reference to something else, it all became a bit too hilarious. Surely no one would think it could mean anything else.

But clearly you can’t assume too much. depa had used that expression in correspondence to a Council about an issue where management needed some significant education and someone, in a relatively responsible job, responded to the blinding light on the road to Damascus with indignation and horror. What, didn’t they understand its common, usual and garden use?

No, they thought we were claiming that Council management was as bad as ISIS, the so-called Islamic State! Damascus is in Syria, get it?

Yes, we would have thought it a notorious expression, pinched from the Christian stories and used broadly, generally and universally and applied to anyone who has some form of revelation or conversion. Every time we see the expression used in the paper, we feel like sending them a link or a copy.

Next time you’re critical about your own HR people, they are worldly, well-read intellectual geniuses compared to this person. Now you can think yourself lucky working where you do.

And a timely reminder that it won’t be long before we give our Worst HR Awards of the year.

Council amalgamations provide “a good night out” for old folks

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Published: Wednesday, 26 October 2016 10:06

When NSW Premier Mike Baird announced a commitment to improving activity levels as part of a health and anti-obesity initiative, no one picked that the public consultation process as part of the Fit for the Future amalgamations was part of that wide-ranging and comprehensive initiative.

The meetings attended around the state, and demonstrations intended to oppose the amalgamation of some of the smallest local government areas in the world, have really got the oldies off the lounge, away from the TV and out to meet with other old folk to natter, have a cup of tea and listen to the self-important, other retirees and superannuants and current and ex local government politicians.

It’s been hard to spot anyone under 60 at any of the meetings or demonstrations organised over the last month and a half. Impossible, really. (Personal disclaimer: Not that the over 60s don’t have an important contribution to make – all that history and expertise!)

Is the opposition to the amalgamation rollout limited to this demographic? If it’s only the retirees, the self-interested and clapped out local politicians, why would the Government pay any attention?