Canterbury says "wash your mouth out with soap"
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 14 September 2011 14:30
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 only 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. It might be okay in the pub but it's not okay with Grandma.
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 in 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, clutching their lavender-scented hankies and taking tea - pinkies extended. And then the professionals, the rangers and parking officers can go 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.
Robbo's Pearls...
Go to jail Meredith!
The High Court on Thursday 3 May hammered the final damning nails into the disgraced corporate reputations of seven James Hardie Board members. The Court unanimously held that the seven non-executive directors had breached their duty to act with care and diligence by approving the release of a statement to the stock exchange in 2001 which misled the market about the company's funding of its workers’ compensation liability. The Court overturned a decision of the NSW Court of Appeal which had let the disgraced directors off the hook.
These people are all corporate bluebloods, previously respected by business, government and the market. They are now disgraced and, trying to cut a complicated story short, the Court also referred back to the NSW Court of Appeal the consideration of penalties including disqualification. The High Court makes it abundantly clear that the Board knew the foundation was underfunded and had specifically developed a strategy to restrict news to the finance pages and their narrow sectional interests rather than provide it generally as news.
James Hardie has killed more Australian workers than most. While Australian workers will continue to die for decades from contact with their products, the damage is not just restricted to anyone employed by them but they've also killed kids, wives, family and friends who came in contact with the dangerous asbestos fibres - fibres known to be dangerous when mined in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.
Companies manufacturing asbestos sheeting in our lifetime preferred to employ older workers. They believe this managed their financial liability because mesothelioma symptoms take a long time to appear and if they employed older blokes they are more likely to have retired and die before the asbestos gets them.
It is now up to the NSW Court of Appeal to review punishments. Not being able to operate as a company director again is the least of it and the original fines of $35,000 each for these seven should have a series of zeros added.
More is the pity that these are not criminal offences and this lot of miscreants won't end up in jail. It is a pity too that we still don't use the stocks because it would be fitting for the seven executives, and especially ex Chairman (sic) of the Board Hellicar, to spend a few weeks in the stocks in Martin Place so that we can all tell them what we think.
While the High Court has nailed these people for endorsing a misleading media release about the underfunding of their liability, there are many implicated in the approval of the NSW Government for Hardy to restructure and move its centre to the Netherlands as part of a process of trying to quarantine their asbestos liability.
Amongst other things, 80 blueblood respectable people of wealth, privilege and reputation provided character statements in support of Hellicar when first prosecuted. I'm going to publish who those people are.
As the Chair of the Investment Committee of LGS I attended the annual conference of the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors in Melbourne in 2004. The guilty Hellicar participated in a panel about corporate behaviour. She was politely asked a question about the recently announced NSW Government investigation of the underfunding of their liability and she told a packed hall of institutional investors that the company had done nothing wrong and that all would be proven. We suspected it was a lie then and we know it is a lie now and I will always regret I didn't boo and heckle this disgraceful performance.
But no one else did anything either. Institutional investors in Melbourne are all very polite and wouldn’t want to frighten the companies Australian superannuation funds invest in. Even those killing Australians, deliberately underfunding their liability for compensation and misleading the market and everyone else about it.
Maybe it's time to do some frightening.
No commentsNews articles archive 2011
On 13 October 2010 lawyers acting for Wagga Wagga builder Peter Hurst advised the Council that he would apologise to council staff for his discredited allegations. He then changed his mind without explanation and we have been waiting 588 days for the apology.
View the full article in depaNews November 2010: Developer agrees to apologise in long-running Wagga Wagga unpleasantness