SAS Staff October Meetings – report to members

SAS Staff October Meetings – report to members (PDF version)

Local Schools Local Decisions (LSLD) means major changes for School Administrative and Support Staff (SAS Staff) in schools. The Department intends to have LSLD fully implemented in all NSW public schools by 2016. This could lead to greater use of casual staff and less job security for SAS Staff.

Throughout October and across NSW, the PSA held 51 SAS Staff meetings with over 400 members participating. The purpose of these meetings was to get feedback from members on their priority concerns regarding the upcoming changes and on the PSA proposal to upgrade the role of the School Administrative Manager (SAM).

At these meetings a discussion was had around the LSLD reforms and the changes to the SAS staffing arrangements in the 229 schools.

A number of questions were then put to the members around SAS Staff issues and in particular whether there is a need for an upgraded SAM role and the following resolution was put at each meeting and was passed 50 in favour to 1 against.

‘This meeting of PSA members support the Schools Departmental Committee’s proposal to upgrade the role of the SAM. Further, the PSA report to members the progress of negotiations with the Department through regular bulletins’.

Overall members are very supportive for the PSA to push the department for an upgraded SAM role, but there was also a very clear message that all SAS Staff need to be part of the wider PSA campaign to protect SAS Staff job security in LSLD.

It was also clearly evident that many SAS Staff are working well beyond the current statement of duties.

Some other key messages that came through were:

• Importance of maintaining current holiday/ leave arrangements (very few were in support of moving across to a 48 weeks per year arrangement).
• Support for some form of industrial action but not work bans.

Where to from here?

The feedback from members has been collated into a report which will be used to assist PSA staff in the Industrial and Strategy and Policy Directorates to prepare a report for the next Schools Departmental Committee on 18 November 2014.

This will form the groundwork for a PSA member driven campaign in schools to progress this issue in 2015.