Special: Welcome to 2015 issue, three disputes already this year but we won't mention *********

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Published: Wednesday, 21 January 2015 12:12

Fit for the Future, or some other F word?

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Published: Tuesday, 20 January 2015 15:02

Well, the pressure is on this year. Councils floundering around about whether they will satisfy the NSW Government’s guidelines on fitness or whether they will be unable to get over the bar.

depa has always been enthusiastic about reforming the historic local government boundaries to develop stronger, better resourced councils more capable of paying market rates, providing family flexible work and proper training. We’ve seen too many councils simply incapable of funding their training needs, and ignoring the interests and welfare of their employees, to let the current arrangements of little organisations effectively trading insolvent, to continue.

Questions about the government’s commitment to boundary changes, an impending NSW State election and the nagging feeling that whatever happens, what you, or we want, is probably not going to be a major consideration, will make this an interesting year.

Anyone for golf 2?

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Published: Tuesday, 20 January 2015 14:59

You can’t say we didn’t warn you, we raised this first back in the November issue.

On Metropolitan Union Picnic Day on Friday 13 March, the depa Union Picnic Day Golf Day will be held again at Blackheath golf course. For members who haven’t attended this great event, words can’t convey what a fabulous and rewarding experience this is.

The Union Picnic Day Golf Day was first held in 2004 and over the years has been won by Blacktown, North Sydney twice, Penrith, Bankstown twice, Leichhardt and Canterbury. Won’t it be embarrassing if Bankstown wins again this year because on the last two occasions the Mayor has provided a nice sandwich lunch for members to allow the presentation of the impressive depa Cup.

The first response to the November issue was from Willoughby Council who will have a team of four. The EDAP group is also sending a team of four who would happily travel to attend and participate. Most of you will know that EDAP is a professional group that in the olden days took over from AIBS and AIEH in that big Western wedge of the state using Penrith or Blue Mountains as the start and fanning out to the South Australian border. Well done, EDAP see you there.
 
Shoalhaven this week advises the sending a team and now we call generally for those of you interested in getting a team together at your Council to let know you are interested and will be attending.

Remember this day is free (we get sponsorship from LGS, even though they are now pro-nuclear) and even if you can’t get up a team from your Council, you can come as part of a composite team with people you know from other councils or happily turn up by yourself and we will allocate you into a team.

Look how nice the place is! This is the 17th green.

Don’t forget our commitment to helping councils provide family friendly work

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Published: Tuesday, 20 January 2015 14:52

It’s hard to imagine anyone in local government is unaware of the enhanced commitment to developing and implementing family flexible work which found its way into the State Award in June last year.

Every week or so we have a member with a difficulty returning to work because Council has been less than accommodating to their requests to balance the needs of their family and, especially the new baby, with their return to work.

The old regime of ancient men bombastically rejecting reasonable requests from mothers (in particular) returning to work no longer holds sway. And just as the old regime was overwhelmed by the Enlightenment in European history, we are many, many years post-Enlightenment now. The parties to the Award are committed to building modern workplaces in local government in New South Wales, whether the old blokes like it or not.

Need help? We love doing things like this. Our third dispute this year was all about this.

How hard is HR? Part 2

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Published: Tuesday, 20 January 2015 14:49

There is a high correlation between being nominated or winning our Worst HR in Local Government Award and improved processes, some derailed career paths and even some people being moved out to try their luck elsewhere. Some councils try harder. The Awards are intended to be rehabilitative and encouraging of change rather than simply punitive. There is no progress or improvement if things are punitive only. Philosophically, depa believes everyone is capable of learning and improving.

One of our nominees last year has already made an effort to improve and two of our nominees are the subject of new disputes with us filed this year. Clearly we weren’t just sitting around at the beach.

Because we always like approaching a new year with enthusiasm and optimism, let’s deal with the good effort first.

Our winner last year, Shoalhaven, responded to the award with a commitment to try harder next year. That’s all well and good, because the proof of the pudding is always in the eating, but when payroll gave bad advice to a member of ours about her entitlement to progress on the trainee scale (incorrectly saying that time on paid leave delayed her annual progression - durr) General Manager Russ Pigg stepped in immediately and fixed it. We like to give credit where it’s due, so good one Russ. One small step …

But two other nominees haven’t fared so well. And one of them, we don’t dare mention. But we can mention Sydney, or the City of Sydney as they like to be acknowledged but, for reasons we will explore below, we can’t mention Bankstown.

Sydney was nominated because they are just so hopelessly slow. We committed to helping them with a timeframe in two areas in 2015 - the development of a proper policy on section 353 Other Work, that they agreed they would redraft a year ago and a review of term contracts.

So, we wrote to the Council on 14 January 2014 asking for them to commit to a timeframe for both of those things to be completed and nominating Friday last week as a deadline, just to help them with their motivation.

But they are very busy at Sydney. For a Council with high environmental credentials, building a sophisticated city with a vibrant and safe nightlife, accessible by public transport and bikes, committed to renewable energy and sensible waste disposal, a fabulous small bars program that has transformed the city at night, fabulous quality food from food trucks and brilliantly conceived and executed seminars on Small Business 101 that on a monthly basis attract more than 160 people to assist small and medium business getting what they need from the Council. But down in the body of the beast, things work very, very slowly.

Sure enough, the timeline sought of the review of term contracts was not responded to at all and on the development of their Other Work policy, the best they could do was send to the three unions a copy of their most recent attempt at reviewing the policy dated August 2014, and something which we had responded to at the end of the year. None of the proposed changes had been adopted and they continued to spell Human Resources as Hunan Resources, raising issues about whether they were thinking about contracting work out to China.

So we filed a dispute, which was listed in the Commission on 21 January to set up a timeframe for the resolution of both of these issues. Wouldn’t you know it, the city has other priorities, can’t make anyone available for the date set and have asked us to delay it a week!

We rejected the request and when it was made to the Commission, they rejected it too.

When the dispute came on before Justice Boland on 21 January, the Commission was convinced sufficiently about the need for some sort of hurry up to be applied and Justice Boland made recommendations on both matters.

The Commission recommended that there be an agreed policy between the Council and the unions by 10 March 2015. The people we deal with in HR couldn’t get a lunch order in by that date but if there is no agreed policy then we go back to pursue the matter further. We hope, because the recommendation also included reference to the City receiving assistance from LGNSW, that we can reach agreement by this time. It’s not that hard.

In relation to the Council’s commitment to review their policy on term contracts, the Commission recommended, again with the assistance of LGNSW, that the City and the unions have an agreed policy by 21 April - three months away.

These are reasonable timeframes which any competent organisation could comply with. The grumpy advocate for the Council may not like them but we could happily sit down with the him and develop an appropriate policy, even based on the dog’s breakfast prepared already over almost a year.

Maybe the solution is simply to leave the City and its astonishingly busy managers and executives out of it. Too much managing, too many meetings, not enough doing.

They could contract it out to Grumpy and me.

But at some stage the City has to put some people into HR who are not constantly at meetings and can allocate sufficient time and energy to get these relatively simple things done.
The State Award has ruled out term contracts in particular circumstances now for more than a decade. Term contracts are simply inappropriate for employees who are doing continuing work. The 2010 Award, with no disagreement between the employer representatives and the unions, identified those areas where term contracts were allowable and these provisions were, again with no dissent or concern, continued in the 2010 Award. They have prevented councils putting people on term contracts which industrial tribunals would subsequently find unacceptable.

Bankstown GM Matthew Stewart

We don’t want to mention Bankstown Council because they found their nomination and the commentary too distressing for words. So, because we don’t gratuitously offend or distress people and because we have started the year flowing with the milk of human kindness, we have decided to edit the story in a way that contains no offence.

Bankstown was so distressed with depaNews they had their solicitor email the office (after we had closed for the year) making a whole range of allegations, demands and generally derogatory observations but most importantly claiming that the commentary may have been contempt of the Commission - an offence, not really provided for in the Industrial Relations Act and certainly not something that has been an issue at all in modern times.
 
It is, after all, all around the world, an issue these days of freedom of speech.

They then wrote to the Industrial Relations Commission suggesting that we may, yes may, be in contempt. No assertion of confidence about the offence, if it is one at all, but prevarication, uncertainty and, maybe, confusion. What, no better advice than dunno?

We’ll let you know how it all pans out later.

The council really does need to have a look at how they deal with organisations representing the interests of their employees. General Manager Matthew Stewart ignored a succession of emails over a number of weeks inviting the Council to develop an investigations policy in conjunction with the unions and suggesting, because this exercise had already been done in a cooperative way with Campbelltown, with the assistance of the IRC, then the Campbelltown investigations policy would be a good start.

But they can’t keep ignoring us because the Industrial Relations Act allows employer and employee organisations to seek their assistance to make things happen when one of the parties is reluctant to negotiate.

So, we filed a dispute which is listed in the Commission on 30 January.

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...

Details

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.