Labour Hire issue in Maitland Revenue NSW – April 2018 (PDF version)

There has been a palpable frustration within Fees and Fines owing to the Management decision to allocate work dealing with the backlog statutory declarations, to labour hire workers (AKA “contingent labour” or “contract workers” or “agency staff”).

Why is management turning its back on existing staff? Most of whom have the prerequisite skills and background knowledge of the organisation to competently carry out this work?

The anger felt by F&Fs staff is completely justified.

The PSA supports another course of action by management which we say will adequately satisfy both employees and Revenue NSW

The change in direction which is required involves management stopping the training of labour hire workers in camera adjudication work which is a clerk 3/4 – and allocate these tasks to existing RNSW staff whether they be Gr. 1/2 or 3/4, as development opportunities. The union has become aware that there are more than a handful of existing staff who are yet to be given such an opportunity. There is no proper reason why existing staff who have acted up shouldn’t be given another go too.

The PSA will strongly oppose the use of labour hire in these circumstances. We won’t wait until the implementation of the restructure to see where things land either.

Public sector roles that carry on for this length of time need to be made permanent.

We know from the Audit Office report that generally speaking labour hire is not a good use of taxpayers’ money. We also know that the increase in the uptake of labour hire results in a greater level of job insecurity across the state, and at the local level the decision just seems unfair.

The PSA will be meeting with Management to try to reach resolution on this issue as well as other issues relating to the “blending” of Services and Collections.

An update will be issued shortly.