Corrective Services Non Custodial bulletin – leave entitlements July 2015 (PDF version)

The Corrective Services Non-Custodial Consultative Committee last met on 24 June 2015. The Consultative Committee is the forum where your union delegates and officials meet with management to discuss and determine issues that affect you in your workplace. It is attended by the Assistant Commissioner Offender Management & Programs, other relevant Directors, the Non-Custodial Departmental Committee and an Industrial Advocate from the PSA.

Recreation leave

Your managers must make all reasonable efforts to ensure that your balance for recreation leave is less than 30 days (six weeks). However, members have complained their managers have told them that they must take their leave on specific days.

This issue was raised at the JCC and CSNSW confirmed that staff cannot be forced to take leave on specific days. If a staff member is required to take leave to reduce their leave balance, a leave plan should be worked out with an employee’s manager. This ensures sufficient leave is taken at a time that is convenient for both the staff member and CSNSW.

Family and Community Service (FACS) leave

You are able to take FACS leave to attend to certain unplanned and emergency family responsibilities or other emergencies.

Situations where you would be eligible for FACS leave include:

• compassionate grounds, which are: the death or illness of a close family or household member

• unplanned family responsibilities, such as emergency cancellations of childcare

• severe weather conditions.

FACS leave accrues at 2.5 days per year for your first two years of employment, and then at a rate of one day a year after that. PSA has a FACS leave factsheet available here

The PSA is concerned CSNSW is applying a rule where FACS leave will not be approved for periods of more than five days except in exceptional circumstances. Your award does not contain any such limit.

At the JCC, CSNSW stated this rule is not being applied. If you have a problem with an application for FACS leave, CSNSW have told us that you may escalate it as follows:

1. Make sure your manager had forwarded your application to Human Resources, even it has been refused
2. The Manager Human Resources can review your application on request
3. If you would like a further review, you can then forward a request to the relevant Director to look at it, then the Assistant Commissioner.