2014 depa award for the worst HR in local government

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Published: Wednesday, 17 December 2014 10:53

This year we have four councils and, in a bit of a departure from the past, two nominees which are not councils but which nevertheless are a part of the industry. In alphabetical order:

Bankstown

What do these people have in common?

None of them like to apologise, regardless of how badly they have done things. They are HR Manager of the Year 2014, Simone Cook, ex PM John Howard and GM Matthew Stewart. But first, some history.

In December 2005 under the heading “Dealing with dreadful Bankstown”, depaNews reported that we had been pursuing Bankstown for breaches of the Local Government (State) Award on the size and composition of the Consultative Committee and their failure to develop a proper salary system.

Sprung by us for breaching the Award by constructing a Consultative Committee and adding representation beyond the minimum required by the Award but without the agreement of the local union representatives, Council claimed in a dispute in the IRC that they hadn’t breached the Award. But nevertheless, they would reconstitute the consultative committee as the Award requires. Funny way of looking at it really.

But the Council was more reluctant to acknowledge that they had never had a salary system that complied with the Award. We filed 13 prosecutions in the NSW Industrial Court for breaches of the Award for our 13 members who hadn’t received annual reviews and the progression based on the acquisition and use of skills required by the Award. Deputy President Grayson at the time in the IRC described the Council’s behaviour as “unhelpful and impractical” and in depaNews it was observed “we have not dealt with a more obtuse, offensive or imaginatively dishonest Council before. While local government often plumbs the depths of poor industrial relations and human resource management practices, Bankstown goes so low that their responses beggar belief.”

In that year as well the Council sacked a member who lost his licence when they could have easily accommodated other travel arrangements; made changes to the organisation structure, refused to have a meeting of members affected but offered individual meetings where management could easily stand over individual employees;  and refused, ultimately unsuccessfully after the filing of a dispute, to allow a member part-time work (even though they enticed him to come and work there on the basis that he could do this and even though he would do full-time hours) to accommodate his family needs. This dispute ended with the Council collapsing and the story reported on page 3 of the Sydney Morning Herald weekend edition with a lovely picture of our member and his two beautiful daughters.

In April 2010 under the heading “Bullying, bastardry and belligerence at Bankstown (and that’s only the b words)” we said:

Bankstown seems to oscillate between ignoring award requirements and treating people poorly, a period of benign employment practices and then back to giving employees a bit of a kicking.

At the time the GM and the HR Manager had decided that the Council would start enforcing their rights under the Award to direct employees to take annual leave in excess of eight weeks. It was unclear who made this decision, it was not recorded or minuted, wasn’t referred to the Consultative Committee for feedback, wasn’t advised to staff, nor was it sent to the unions. The unions first became aware of it when a member of ours on Thursday 25 March, about to head off on leave at the end of the following day for four weeks overseas, received a direction that she remain on leave for a further 9 ½ weeks.

In the IRC the Council was directed to withdraw their direction about the taking of the additional leave and to raise this for discussion on her return and to take steps to consult with the unions and staff over this new proposal.

2005 had been grim, but then a benign period until, five years later in 2010, where things got grim again. Is this potentially a five year cycle or are they capable of getting malignant again before 15?

A different GM and HR Manager saw an issue with the Consultative Committee where the GM wanted to supplement the union representation but couldn’t get the agreement of the local union representatives - as the Award requires. Yes, the old issue which we had disputed in 2005, and they still hadn’t learned. The GM thought all he had to do was keep asserting he wanted it and everyone would just give in. Attrition and repetition wins, he thought. Constant dripping does we are away stone, and so the GM constantly dripped.

No-one gave in and the Committee remains unchanged. Maybe he just doesn’t like unions.

But this year the Council conducted a clumsy, sub-professional investigation which cleared a member of ours but which revealed what could be about the worst letter ever written in local government. The letter conveyed to the member that the allegations were not substantiated but based on the report the Council was concerned about the way the one-on-one interview was conducted. The Council “deemed the manner in which you conducted the meeting” was somehow unsatisfactory.  The interview was only one-on-one, without someone from HR, because the member sought assistance from HR, they refused it, and said he should do it alone. How could they “deem” anything? How can we be satisfied that they weren’t just making it up?

And if a meeting is one-on-one, in a private room, it’s hard to imagine that anyone could make a finding or even an observation. The Council insisted that an apology be provided and that the employee do some training. They refused access to the investigator’s report, although it remains uncertain whether it’s their policy (although the GM says it is their policy not to do this) or relates to the arrangements with the investigator.

In an exchange of emails with depa their HR Manager Simone Cook (who by coincidence and, based on this experience, somewhat inexplicably) had just been announced as some magazine’s HR Manager of the Year, withdrew the requirement to apologise but then decided to add that the purpose of the training would be to “assist his understanding of human resources processes”, which was not an issue that had ever been raised. HR Manager of the Year simply added that.

In the Commission, the Council conceded that the words the HR Manager of the year had added, should not have been added and there were some words in the letter clearing him that should not have been there either. Yet another stumble in an abjectly flawed and sub-professional process where almost at every step, the Council made a mistake, or did something wrong, and should have apologised.

Our dispute proceedings in the Commission forced the Council to withdraw all reference, documentation and any other record relating to this clumsy and inept process from the employee’s personal file. And they withdrew their direction to do training - instead accepting that the employee, who had never received any training at all at the Council, should be able to identify some suitable training, request it, and the Council will agree.

That’s depa 5 - HR Manager of the Year nil.

One of the gratuitous observations in the email exchange between us (which you can read here) was at that “we would have anticipated… would have recognised the effect his behaviour had on a junior officer, and apologised in any event.”

They might concede that “the letter could have been better drafted”, they had agreed inappropriate wording had been introduced which shouldn’t have been, they had withdrawn the requirement to apologise and the requirement to be directed to training, but they still claimed they had nothing to apologise for and there would be no apology.

Five nil down, you would think that losing this so fundamentally on every contested point and acknowledging that a number of things could have been done better, to clear the air with the employee concerned, the HR Manager of the Year would apologise as we both left the Commission. We gave her for the opportunity but she refused.

Was it just her, or was it a corporate approach? We all make mistakes, decent and reasonable people acknowledge them, apologise and get on with it. It’s all about the good manners our mums taught us, after all.

So we wrote to the GM Matthew Stewart and he said:

I understand that when you left the proceedings you inappropriately and with inappropriate language sought an apology from Council. As I advised my staff, and for your information, thematter is closed and I have no interest in pressing the issue further.

No apology need be made to Mr Crossan as the issue was handled in accordance with Council policy and procedure.

But the only policy we could find makes no such reference to issues like withholding access to investigator’s reports or refusing to apologise for fundamental miscarriages of justice and simply getting things wrong. We asked if there were other policies and he has ignored us.

The GM keeps saying the matter is closed, we’ve now written to him asking him to agree to sit down with the unions and negotiate a proper investigations policy and we await his reply.

It’s not closed Matthew, is it.

The Division of Local Government

Well, are they the Office of Local Government or the Division of Local Government, it does keep changing and no one ever really knows. Whatever it is, changing their name doesn’t protect them.

They get a special nomination this year for the steps taken in the Standard Contract for GMs and Senior Staff Working Party by defending the right of councils to sack employees for no good reason, by denying proper financial payments and compensation on termination, by prohibiting the payment of a cash bonus because no one in the NSW public sector gets one, so why should people in local government, and, in documents only just received, further proposed amendments trying to remove entitlements and protections for senior staff on termination.

But we still don’t understand where this savage and antagonistic attitude comes from. Who let the dogs out?

The DLG, or OLG, or whatever it calls itself now, in 2005 developed the first standard contract by excluding the unions and focusing on the input of LGNSW (the peak body of councillors) and the LGMA (an organisation that never really knows what it is or what it does) and created issues not remedied for years.

So, they get a nomination.

Local Government Managers' Association

LGMA, LGPA, Professionals or Poseurs, whoever they are, 2014 was the year where the Board of Directors of the organisation launched an inexpert and hostile foray into industrial relations by attacking the State Award, by dabbling like dilettantes in an industrial process for which they had no expertise nor skill, nor any interest beyond ensuring that they could underpay people under a federal award rather than comply with the provisions of the State Award.

And who could forget their opposition to the provision of a discretion for Councils to provide half pay sick leave for chronically ill or injured employees.

By what could only be coincidence, the 2014 elections for LGMA/LGPA witnessed two of the advocates of these punishing initiatives not contesting their positions. Long-time President Paul Bennett (GM at Tamworth in his real job and in the process of trying to strip away the nine day fortnight from staff) and director Andrew Cackenthorp (Director of Planning at Wagga Wagga) and acknowledged for his fear of establishing a precedent for our member with secondary cancer in the August issue of depaNews this year, decided they wouldn’t stand again.

It would be coincidence only, wouldn’t it?

Good riddance to them both and we all hope this is part of the process of LGMA (or whatever) acknowledging they should never have got themselves involved in the industrial process in the first place.

It would be coincidence only, wouldn’t it?

Shoalhaven

GM Russ Pigg: “let me know how we can improve …”

Shoalhaven, Shoalhaven, Shoalhaven,
That’s where I want to be,
Shoalhaven, Shoalhaven, Shoalhaven,
Rorting employees’ JE*
*JE is the abbreviation for job evaluation, never really used as an abbreviation in the industry, but at least it rhymes.

2014 was punctuated by our long-running dispute with more than ten compulsory conferences in the IRC. A restructure by GM Russ Pigg, aided and abetted by Director of Planning Tim Fletcher and a moving feast of HR functionaries, led to us filing a dispute because the Council had failed to comply with their obligation to advise employees affected and the unions to which they belonged. But then, it just got worse.

Proceedings in the Commission revealed that the Council had a corporate policy of evaluating positions for health, building and planning professionals to keep them out of 3/3. The restructure involved attempts to laterally transfer or redeploy two of our members into Team Leader positions artificially evaluated to be 3/2 so they could be transferred because they already were 3/2.

The dispute resulted in the positions being acknowledged to be 3/3 and the two members concerned, pretty fed up with the antagonistic and hostile attitude of the GM, Director and assorted HR flunkies, decided that they would both take the opportunity to take a redundancy. That was a good strategy wasn’t it, Tim.

Then it was revealed they had tried to remove condition of employment cars from other employees they wanted to transfer into promotional jobs and we were able through the proceedings in the Commission to have them reinstate those entitlements.

Underlining all of this was the Council’s use of Version 19 of Wyatt/00Soft, which had been replaced as obsolete and not properly evaluating the authority and accountability of 3/3 employees, amongst other things, in 1995. Clearly it was more “manageable” for the Council’s purpose. 

We identified Shoalhaven as an unbackable favourite in our July issue. At that time the dispute had been in the Commission on five occasions and when it ended, it had been there more than double that. Few disputes in the industry ever have that sort of history.

The restructure provided additional rewards for the rationalised Directors and Managers and clearly the Council was trying to save some money as the restructure cascaded down the organisation.

Obviously that hasn’t worked, losing two good employees with ten year plus histories at the Council to redundancies that would have never been factored into their costing, and now a long history of getting nailed in the Commission for trying to remove entitlements from others and revealing a supersensitive Tim Fletcher convening staff meetings to criticise depa for its activities and publicising the Council’s failures. He didn’t ring me up to mention it and I offered to come to a staff meeting with him and we could debate it.

What sort of management thinks it makes sense to keep salary levels down and to behave in such an antagonistic and unfair way that the Council’s reputation as a fair and reasonable employer suffers irreparable damage?

The last three building surveyor positions appointed by the Council were employees not accredited by the BPB, because employees already accredited wouldn’t apply for the jobs. Now the Council needs to train them to the level denied them because of their salary and recruitment strategies.

Stupid, short-sighted poor management.

Sydney City Council

What, a nomination for the competent, progressive Council of elected people cooperatively transforming the night-time economy of the city, and developing a more accessible, public-transport focused and sustainable city with a massive financial surplus to be invested in infrastructure and improvements in the quality of the city for residents and visitors alike?

But the underbelly reveals industrial instruments that haven’t progressed or developed much beyond the mid 20th century. Term contracts for employees doing continuous work that, if they were employed under the State Award would not be allowable, 38 hour weeks for administrative/professional staff where the State Award provides for 35 and an overtime barrier to ensure that those people employed on contracts who wouldn’t be employed on contracts under the State Award, don’t get paid for their additional hours either.

In 2014 we discovered that the Council had a policy on “other work” under section 353 of the Local Government Act which went beyond the requirements of that section of the Act by requiring all employees to declare other work, whether it related to or conflicted with their work or not - an unannounced return to a policy that they had unsuccessfully tried in 1994 and 1995 until we disputed it and make them stick to their obligations under the Act.

And not just a broader unacceptable policy beyond the obligations in the Act, but one with a blanket approach to rejecting all applications and, when we advocated for a member with a carefully-crafted application that anticipated the need to manage all risks and which had the sign off and approval of their manager and director, the GM refused it. And at the meeting told us, that she refused it for fear of how the Daily Telegraph may deal with that if they ever found out. What?

Everyone is entitled to feel paranoid about the evil of the Evil Empire, but there really is a limit and, after filing a dispute, the GM recognised that was the case and approve the application.

In February this year they agreed to redraft their policy to better and more accurately reflect the requirements of section 353 that employees only need seek approval for work which relates to or conflicts with their Council job. On 5 March we sent them 26 observations about the inadequacy of their policy to help them review it – a process that other councils have done in a month or so. But, eight months later, still nothing had been produced.

And then when it was provided on 27 November it was so deeply flawed and embarrassing (for example, it didn’t even specify that employees should not do other work in council time!) we again responded, this time with 15 points that needed to be dealt with.

In the Award negotiations this year we had unsuccessfully argued for the introduction of a prohibition on term contracts like that which exists in the State Award - provisions which do no more than recognise that industrial tribunals in other States or Federally have made many findings about where it is in inappropriate to employees on term contracts and it makes sense, if Council is going to be rolled by tribunals for putting people on term contracts who shouldn’t be, that the Award should ensure that it’s not allowable.

We couldn’t convince them, clearly we should have arbitrated it, because within months, one of the problems of term contracts was revealed. Term contracts need to be properly managed, obligations about telling people whether you intend to renew the contract need to be complied with and, if you are a Director and you tell a Manager that they will get another three-year term, then that needs to be something you deliver on - not, as the City did by trying to provide 12 months instead.

As part of our agitation on the member’s behalf, the City agreed that they would review their attitude to term contracts but, if it’s going to be anything like their review of this section 353 policy, we know it will only happen if we make them.

We won’t wait for the City to do this in their normal HR policy pace.

Wagga Wagga

Wagga Wagga is now notorious as the Council least likely to provide sympathy and support for a chronically ill employee. It’s hard to imagine any of you missed August depanews and our identification of GM Phil Pinyon and Director Andrew Krackenthorp as a couple of real bustards. Our delegate Steven Cook, the employee treated so harshly wanting additional sick leave as he fought off secondary cancer was overwhelmed by contact and support from members and other Councils and that issue of depaNews went viral across Wagga Wagga.

No wonder they are having trouble recruiting a Manager of Strategic Planning. Pre-appointment medical screening of course

In the meantime, the GM has agreed to let Steven draw on his potential to accumulate sick leave in 2015, so obviously he’s hoping Steven survives the year. Better than nothing, and pleased he didn’t accept HR’s advice, the three documents way but it still doesn’t get you two bustards off the hook.

And the winner is...

The winners, Russ and Tim

Shoalhaven, how could it be anyone else.

GM Russ Pigg and Director of Planning Tim Fletcher should be proud. The Council’s reputation damaged, unable to recruit suitably qualified and accredited staff and discredited through a long and painful series of compulsory conferences that provided them with no comfort.

And while this catastrophe was all unfolding on Tim’s watch, aided and abetted by those same HR flunkies, GM Russ Pigg presented a paper at a convention of the Local Government Managers' (sic) Association titled “Transformational Change - The Shoalhaven Story” which, one would think had to be self-deprecating and a warning to other people about what to avoid, and not a presentation of a model process to be emulated, but wasn’t.

We will present the Golden Turd to Russ and Tim in 2015

How hard is HR?

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Published: Wednesday, 17 December 2014 10:52

When the Local Government (State) Award was finalised in 1991 to operate from 1992 it contained, for the first time in local government, a requirement that employees would only progress based on the acquisition and use of skills. Those of us who negotiated the Award believed that covered nearly everyone but negotiations were regularly punctuated with observations that if there were a group of employees in the industry who never learned anything, nor acquired new skills, it had to be HR.

That was a bit harsh because there are HR professionals in local government committed to improving job satisfaction; developing flexible work to allow better work and family balance and systems to accommodate the child care and educational needs of employees’ kids; having fair and transparent job evaluation; treating people respectfully; interpreting the Award and policies correctly; facilitating broad access to health and well-being days; ignoring HR advice from the dilettantes at LGMA; conducting investigations, when they need to be conducted, fairly, assuming the innocence of the employee being investigated, and concluding those investigations promptly.

Investigating allegations of poor performance or unacceptable behaviour is one area where many, many councils simply get it wrong. Councils often don’t have reasonable or realistic policies to guide their staff or external contractors on how to conduct investigations that treat employees fairly. Some councils struggle to develop them. Some don’t care.

In 2006 Campbelltown City Council undertook to develop an investigations policy as a result of an industrial dispute we had filed where two clumsy and inexpert directors had stumbled their way through an investigation of one of our members. There was no useful policy to guide them. Eight years later, again in an industrial dispute we had filed simply because we couldn’t wait any longer, we were able to reach agreement with the Council on what we would like to think should become a model for councils in the industry. An investigations policy underpinned by the presumption of innocence and requirements for procedural fairness.

We revealed a conga line of incompetents at Gosford in 2011 in another of our disputes where six employees, from the acting General Manager down, simply couldn’t get their act together sufficiently to properly conduct an investigation and to speedily conclude it. And given that the issue was over right of access, none of them even bothered to ask anyone who knew how right of access worked. Durr.

They were nailed by the President of the IRC (no less) who, amongst other things, recommended the Council develop an investigations policy cooperatively with the unions. And then that didn’t happen until a new GM, three years later made sure it did - by which time only one of the six in the conga line was still doing the same job – of the remaining five, one had been transferred and the rest were gone.

Last month we filed a dispute with Bankstown over a clumsy and subprofessional process where allegations were made against a member of ours in a supervisory job. An employee already on a final warning and sprung again for failing to do the job properly had been interviewed in a one-on-one and then lodged a grievance about the style of the interview.

Bankstown thought it made sense to contract an external investigator to conduct the investigation. Having seen the draft record of interview and the corrected version by our member, it’s hard to believe they were at the same meeting. But while our member was cleared of any wrongdoing, the Council, claiming that this was the modus operandi of the investigator, would not provide a copy of the investigator’s report so that our member could read it and be satisfied with the process.

An investigated employee is always entitled to see a copy of any findings or reasoning used by an investigator and upon which Council might make a judgement. To do otherwise is to deny the employee the subject of the complaint the accepted principles of procedural fairness.

Bankstown says their policy doesn’t require the provision of the document and this is something we will fix in 2015. But, at the same time, they have said that SINC Solutions insist that the report not be provided because witnesses and others gave evidence confidentially.

Imagine that, someone is charged with a crime or an offence but the prosecutor in the investigation refused to disclose the evidence and the person is unable to test it. Unfair, unfair, unfair.

We have engaged with SINC Solutions trying to understand whether it was the Council’s fault, or SINC Solutions, or a collective unfairness in which they both shared blame.

Still no reply and you can see how hard we tried here. 

So, until we clear this up and they respond to us, if you are to be investigated at your Council, the investigator had better be someone else or you won’t ever be able to examine the findings.

And that, with great relief, is the end of the year...

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Published: Tuesday, 16 December 2014 16:18

We will be closing the office on the afternoon of Friday 19 December, Margaret will be returning on Monday 5 January and I’ll be back on Tuesday 13 January. 2015, that is.

Keep yourself out of trouble; keep well and safe and don’t have anything to do with SINC Solutions; enjoy your time off; clear your heads for the year ahead; hope none of the nuclear power plants LGS is now invested in blow up; think about getting a team together for our Union Picnic Day Golf day at Blackheath on Friday 13 March; love and appreciate your families and hope that Santa does a better job for you all than the people we’ve identified here.

Have a good Christmas and a great, rewarding and a brilliant HR new year.

depa’s awards for the Worst HR in Local Government

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Published: Tuesday, 16 December 2014 15:19

We decided in 2009 to provide awards to recognise the industry’s worst performance in human resources. Not just putting up the barricades to prevent flexibility and health and wellbeing provisions, for example, not just a lack of imagination in caring for parents at work, not just for being a little bit rigid-minded or totally antagonistic to the interests of employees, but something that really makes that Council stand out.

HR practices at Bankstown had been so bad over many years that in December 2005 depaNews invited members to nominate ”Is anywhere worse than Bankstown”-  in a competition with a proper prize and a great deal of interest. The response was clearly no, there isn’t.

In 2010 Bankstown won the inaugural award with no other nominations.

In 2011, from a field that included Blayney, Fairfield, Gosford, Lismore, Liverpool, Upper Hunter and Taree, Taree was the winner.

In 2012 from a field that included Gosford (again, uh oh) Nambucca, Lismore and Richmond Valley, Lismore was the winner.

In 2013, Ballina, Fairfield, Liverpool and Nambucca (again) were the finalists and the winner was Fairfield.
This history shows a couple of recidivists but no Council has ever won the award twice.

Fairfield was lucky this year not to be nominated. It has to be the only Council in the state where the GM didn’t attend the staff Christmas party last week. Still not taking responsibility, Alan? While the two directors attended, only four of the six group managers below the directors turned up to thank staff for their contribution over the year. That’s four of the nine members of the Senior Executive Team. Charming.
 

Shoalhaven dispute resolved but the Council suffers lasting damage

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Published: Wednesday, 26 November 2014 09:08

“I’ve had worse”, says Director Tim Fletcher

Well, who’d be surprised Shoalhaven would struggle to get suitably qualified applicants to fill the positions vacated by members of ours deciding to go to places where they are treated with more dignity and respect? Apart from management at Shoalhaven.

More of that next month when our highly regarded Golden Turd award is announced for 2014.

Our long-running dispute with Shoalhaven has now concluded. More than 10 days of compulsory conferences in the IRC, all of which reinforced the Council’s hostility to openness, transparency and fair treatment of its staff.

Shoalhaven featured in July 2014 as an early favourite in our HR Awards with a comprehensive listing of all the contested matters in this long-running dispute. At that stage we said we were ahead seven nil and the Council was failing to score at all.

The mystery and secrecy of the obsolete job evaluation system continued.  We had forced the Council to re-evaluate two team leader positions that they had originally proposed would be 3/2, so that they could laterally transfer two employees into the jobs without additional pay and without running the risk of redundancies and, sure enough, they had rorted the system, they were really 3/3. So, we wanted other jobs re-evaluated as well, so they opposed that vigourously and, when the Commission encouraged them to do so, they begrudgingly did so without disclosing the effect of the agreed changes, so no one would have any idea. Again, Commission encouraged them to do so. And they did. I’ve lost score by now. A zillion to nil?

But that wasn’t the end of it. They contested the vacating of dates that had been set by agreement, unsuccessfully of course consistent with everything else they had tried, and even contesting our request to vacate a date, set in our absence by the IRC. They lost that too.

We had two other positions finally re-evaluated but, while we were not able to move them into 3/3, at least the members concerned know they had a chance to have the positions evaluated with their own input rather than being pressed down by Director of Planning and Development Services Tim Fletcher and the flunkies from HR.

The dispute concludes with the Council having agreed to implement version 20 of the OOSoft job evaluation system in 2015. This is the system which superseded version 19 in 1998.

2014 HR Awards to be announced next month

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Published: Tuesday, 25 November 2014 15:04

It’s never too late to remind us of HR people doing it badly. Got someone who handled something badly, was humiliated and withdrew all of the evidence of the folly but just refuses to apologise to remedy the hurt? We’d love to know.

Anyone for golf?

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Published: Tuesday, 25 November 2014 15:03

Anyone for golf is the wrong question. Is there anyone who wouldn’t love a pleasant walk around Blackheath golf course, on a perfect early autumn day, in the company of friends and colleagues? Golf is not a good walk spoiled, it’s a great walk enhanced.

The first depa Union Picnic Day Golf Day was first held in 2004 to allow members to get together on the union picnic day holiday in the State Award in the company of their workmates and friends. It has been a very successful and enjoyable event won, over the years, by Blacktown, North Sydney twice, Penrith, Bankstown twice, Lithgow, Leichhardt and Canterbury.

It has been cancelled twice. Once in 2012 when far too much rain made the golf course unplayable and last year when we struggled to get sufficient members interested in playing. Well, we struggled until we announced that we had cancelled it and then the calls and emails came in from people who were going to play, but hadn’t told us.

The depa Union Picnic Day Golf Day will be held on Friday, 13 March 2015 at Blackheath golf course.

We know we have some keen golfers desperate for the day to be back on but all members are welcome to make up a team from their Council, or with friends in other councils and come and join us.

Golf is a game where the frequency with which you play or practice has little relationship to the quality of your performance. And yes, sometimes people do wonder why they bother, it’s a challenge, it’s fun and you only have to hit the ball properly once or twice to understand the attraction.

Everyone is welcome. All you need is an appreciation of the beauty of Blackheath and a sense of humour.

No need to respond yet, but if you want to get an early spot, email Margaret on . We will publish reminders in each issue of depaNews until then.

depa offers a prize in 2015

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Published: Tuesday, 25 November 2014 14:59

The introduction of a Health and Wellbeing provision in the Award has really frightened the horses. Not to mention those people afraid of precedents or providing their supervisory staff and managers with a discretion.

A simple clause intended to allow employees to apply for access to days from their sick leave for activities that assist their health, fitness and wellbeing was greeted by the stone-wallers and wowsers putting up the barricades - trying to set up policies to restrict its application only for pre-arranged preventative medical appointments. Too many people were afraid of setting precedents, and the not just the old bustards at Wagga Wagga.

We would like to see Councils embrace the concept by having the consultative committee call for ideas about what could fall within the general category of health and well-being activities rather than simply putting up t a wall to prevent supervisors or managers considering whether someone could do with an afternoon bushwalking, or surfing, or doing a meditation course or yoga, or consultation on a program with a professional trainer, or a head-clearing game of golf, or tai chi in the mornings in a group, or whatever.

We would like to see a Council introduce the provision with a broad discretion to supervisors and managers to call it as they see it, understanding that rorting the system will destroy it forever, but providing real access to employees to do things to improve their health, fitness and well-being.

As depa was the originator of the clause, LGNSW invited us to speak at their HR group meeting in September. They did so with the warning that this was not a time to be talking about HR flunkies and unimaginative bureaucrats and, from our perspective, the meeting contained very few, if any, who that could fit into that category. Certainly none of them put their hands up to ask a question.

So, excited by the prospects of good things happening in the company of councils saying they were already doing things like that, depa offered a $500 prize to be awarded in 2015 for the Council which most embraces the spirit and intention of this provision and the desirability of access being provided to sick leave days for wide-ranging activities with limited restrictions.

We are talking to LGNSW about an appropriate way of managing this and judging it and the $500 prize, because giving people cash is a bit of a bad look in local government (particularly if you’re sitting in the back of the Lord Mayor’s Bentley in Newcastle), so the $500 will be available for the favourite charity of the winning Council.

We’ll keep you in the loop. Given what we have seen so far, some councils are looking at being broad and inclusive while many are looking at being narrow-focused and fearful.

Confusing messages from LGS

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Published: Tuesday, 25 November 2014 14:52

LGS Chair Bruce Miller “promises ESG to be retained”

On 22 April 2013, Investment Magazine, under the heading “New chair at LGS promises more growth, ESG” Chair Bruce Miller said the fund retained “its attention fixed firmly on environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment strategies”.

He continued, “the fund’s unique ESG approach to investment has proven to be a successful formula that the fund will continue to build upon.” Oh yeah?

“Chief executive Peter Lambert said “a ‘surprisingly simple’ ESG investment approach has delivered a positive return despite the doubts of some. He added that, being a discrete portfolio in itself, it’s very easy to measure whether it’s adding value to members - and it has … We do find that, over the long term, we’ve had a positive outcome”.

Ethical Investor magazine on 30 October 2013 reported “Local Government Super vows to maintain its leadership in responsible finance despite the resignation of ethical investing stalwart Ian Robertson.” A vow clearly not written in blood. A non-core vow, perhaps.

In response to the Fund’s embracing of nuclear risk, we asked some questions and, amongst other things the fund responded with a letter dated 10 October, “the screening out of uranium mining/nuclear energy has to date not had a negative impact on historical returns.”

And this view, of no loss over the years, was reinforced when the LGS CEO, CIO and Sustainability Manager presented to the depa Committee of Management on 6 November. The sector itself was described as “not a very good performing sector”.

What does all this mean? Leaving aside boasts of continuing to build on the fund’s ESG commitment of more than a decade, it means that the decision to not hold uranium mining or nuclear energy stocks didn’t cost the fund anything. Nothing, no losses, no pain, no suffering and no exposure to the Fukushimas of the world.

But, unlike the decision of the Board in 2000 (when similar testing showed that in terms of returns it didn’t matter whether the Fund owned tobacco or not and the Fund decided they would rather not), on this occasion the Board in September decided that the screening against uranium mining/nuclear energy should go. Things have changed.

Having done so, uranium/nuclear stocks held by index managers in the international portfolios that would have been shorted*, using the “surprisingly simple” approach, so that the fund effectively didn’t hold them, would now be embraced and retained.

Which means that since 1 October, the fund has held shares to a value of around $4.5 million in six international nuclear energy companies.

In the 10 October reply the fund observed “to date the response by the media has been largely positive.”

But how about the responses are of members of the fund?

(*What is “shorted”?  Shorting stock is a way of making money when share prices go down. It allows an investor to borrow stock in a company where they believe the price will go down, sell the stock at the price it was borrowed at and, when the price does go down, buy it back, making a nice little earner. The stock is then returned to the original owner with the payment of a fee and the investor pockets the profit from selling stock they knew was going to go down. Shorting also allows an investor to quantify gains or losses form the process.)

We don't care about Peter Hurst

Details

Published: Tuesday, 25 November 2014 14:42

Friday last week marked 1500 days since Wagga Wagga developer Peter Hurst reneged on an agreement to apologise to two of our members.

He had made allegations to Wagga Wagga City Council which he couldn’t sustain. We described them in the November 2010 issue as “inaccurate, baseless, derogatory and offensive allegations” and they had been dismissed by the Council’s Internal Auditor after a comprehensive investigation.

The Industrial Relations Commission had recommended that the Council seek an apology from Mr Hurst and in response to the Council, Walsh and Blair lawyers advised they were acting for Peter Hurst and “we are instructed that our client will apologise to Council staff. The form of an apology will have to be the subject of agreement.”

That was pretty impressive. We all make mistakes and it’s important to clear the air and apologise for things that happen inadvertently or where you have simply been wrong. Everyone agrees with this, it’s what our mums taught us, after all.

Well, nearly all of us – we can update you about Bankstown next time.

But we didn’t even get the opportunity to have a good old-fashioned argument about the content of the apology because Peter Hurst just reneged. No explanation, just changed his mind - obviously trying to redress the gender inequality of the traditional wisdom that only a lady had the prerogative to change their mind. You go, girl!

But we thought his agreement to apologise said a lot about the man. A big man, both literally and metaphorically, we thought.

Clearly he wasn’t, so we have run a clock ever since on our home page reminding everyone that some people are honourable, and some aren’t.
But 1500 days is enough. The clock will be removed.