New salvo in state's war on WFH
The NSW Department of Criminal Justice will be brought before the Industrial Relations Commission after domestic violence and helpline staff pushed back against a return to work mandate.
The Public Service Association (PSA) raised a dispute with the DCJ regarding the department's expectation that call-centre staff return to the office 'principally' or 50 per cent of the time.
The mandate would mean staff, including those dealing with DV victims and child protection services, would need to attend the Liverpool or regional office for at least 50 per cent of their shifts.
The PSA said the policy came in response to a circular from Premier Chris Minns last year that, while not specifically calling for an end to working from home, said it should not be 'taken for granted'.
'The circular does not strictly prescribe patterns of attendance and allows for ad hoc variations for the needs of employees and organisations,' the PSA said in a statement on Friday morning.
'As per the dispute resolution process, we met with DCJ and asked for feedback as to why they would not consider you for an ad hoc exemption. They have not provided any formal response yet.' NSW Premier Chris Minns said working from home should not be 'taken for granted'. NewsWire/ Gaye Gerard Credit: News Corp Australia
Due to a lack of response, the service workers union is now seeking 'the assistance' of the state's Industrial Relations Commission, with the first conciliation meeting held on Wednesday.
The PSA said it sought to understand the 'specific operation grounds' the DCJ was using to 'deny the ad hoc exemption', with a further hearing on June 17.
'Yet there have been no operational requirements provided, other than simply the Premier's circular,' the PSA said.
'Your delegates and the PSA do not believe there is any valid operational requirement for an increase in office attendance, as the work you perform has been structured around remote working for the past four years or longer.
'You work in the same manner in the office, as you do from home, with the same processes, practices, and structures.'
A meeting between the union and helpline and DV line members is slated for June 2.
An end to Covid-era work-from-home arrangements and mandated return to the office has been a significant sticking point in both the private and government sectors in recent years. Anthony Albanese and Mr Minns differ on their view of working from home. Jason Edwards / NewsWire Credit: News Corp Australia
In his circular, Mr Minns noted the usefulness of WFH arrangements in 'attracting and retaining talented people' since 2019 but said there were 'many ways' to achieve flexible work arrangements.
Mr Minns said WFH arrangements were not available to all government employees, and the starting position is that those staff 'work principally in an approved workplace in NSW'.
'Arrangements to work from home on some occasions must take into consideration the wider needs of departments, agencies, the community and stakeholders,' the August circular stated.
Mr Minns' opposition to WFH caused friction during the election.
The state premier told reporters during the campaign that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was dealing with different circumstances in his opposition of the Liberals' plan to end WFH for public servants.
A report earlier this month found staff at NSW Treasury were in the office only about half the time, or about 2.5 days per week, increasing from an average of 1.7 days per week in July 2024.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sydney Morning Herald
9 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
This one union must not railroad the deal to end Sydney's train chaos
A territorial brawl within the ranks of train unions is now threatening the resolution of their protracted and disruptive pursuit of a pay rise that has played havoc with Sydney's train system and damaged the NSW economy for so many months that any lingering sympathy for their cause has evaporated and turned into anger. The powerful Electrical Trades Union has baulked at signing an agreement that most believed would finally end the strikes and other actions that, since last September, have caused considerable anxiety for people who rely on rail services not just to get to work but to keep medical appointments. The union campaign not only threatened major events, including New Year's Eve, but in some instances, saw passengers left on crowded platforms or in packed carriages for hours in the middle of summer with little regard for their personal safety or the dangers they faced. Unions had been seeking a risible 32 per cent pay rise over four years and a 35-hour working week. The Minns government opened with a 9.5 per cent rise over three years before offering the Combined Rail Unions 12 per cent, plus back pay backdated to May 2024. On Friday in the Fair Work Commission, the Rail, Tram and Bus Union agreed to the government's offer. It was cheers all around, with the state government celebrating the in-principle agreement as a win, claiming it just needed to be voted on by union members. Now the settlement of the damaging dispute is jeopardised by the inability of the unions to get their act together. Loading The ETU is reportedly threatening to block the deal, apparently unhappy with the way maintenance and engineering employees were categorised in the proposed agreement. A recommendation from members of the Fair Work Commission, including president Justice Adam Hatcher, SC, described the issue as an 'apparently insurmountable impediment to the parties reaching a successful outcome' in their bargaining. 'We infer that the dispute issue has at its heart, at least in part, a demarcation dispute between the ETU and other unions which represent maintenance and engineering employees.' The ETU and state government will return to the commission on Monday to try to resolve the sticking point.
Sky News AU
21 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Jim Chalmers resorting to new taxes is a misguided attempt to ‘purchase prosperity' as private investment in the Australian economy crashes
Earlier this month, a collapsed high-voltage wire near Strathfield Station brought Sydney's entire railway network to a halt, forcing commuters to endure days of chaos and delay. The State Government and rail officials scrambled to apologise, offering a fare-free travel day as compensation. But no number of free rides can repair the ancient cabling, rigid work practices, and flawed design that make the city's rail system so fragile. Sydney's rail meltdown is more than a transport failure - it is a metaphor for Australia's broader political and economic malaise. A system that appears to function smoothly on the surface is merely running on inertia. Beneath the facade lies decay: decades of short-termism, underinvestment, and complacency. This week's news that business investment is falling confirms the rot has spread to the foundations of the national economy and that the current government has little appetite for structural reform. Non-mining investment contracted by 1.6 per cent nationally in the March quarter, while private capital expenditure dropped by 5.3 per cent in Victoria in the three months to March. Yet private investment is the engine of job creation, productivity, and wage growth. Without it, the reverse holds: business shrinks, employment stagnates, and economic momentum falters. Capital - the lifeblood of any economy - flows to where it is welcomed and where returns are reliable. Under Treasurer Jim Chalmers, businesses are increasingly wary of investing in Australia, deterred by high costs, regulatory burdens, and policy uncertainty. The Albanese government's Future Made in Australia strategy risks remaining a slogan unless it can reverse this investment drought. But rising energy costs and an increasingly unreliable power supply are driving manufacturers offshore. On top of that, Australia's high labour costs and complex industrial relations system deter new ventures. CSL Chairman Brian McNamee captured the mood when he said businesses were reacting to 'an accumulation of hostile policies and government crowding out of enterprise'. Investment capital, he warned, 'will find homes elsewhere that are more welcoming and reward risk-taking'. These cracks in our economic edifice didn't appear overnight. Like Sydney's ageing power lines and outdated rolling stock, the deterioration has been years in the making. Australia's GDP per capita has now declined for seven consecutive quarters - a sign that, were it not for population growth through immigration, the country would be in recession. Productivity, the key driver of long-term prosperity, has flatlined. Over the past two decades, it has grown at just 0.7 per cent per year. In the last year, growth was a mere 0.5 per cent. Small wonder that living standards have been slipping since the pandemic. Whatever growth the economy shows is increasingly the product of government spending - now at 27 per cent of GDP, up two points from pre-COVID levels. But governments cannot purchase prosperity any more than they can restore a rail system with free travel days. Eventually, they resort to new taxes. Mr Chalmers' proposal to tax unrealised capital gains in superannuation is one such example - a measure that will discourage long-term savings and further undermine private investment. Self-managed super funds, often used to back small business and start-ups, will be particularly affected. For a cautionary tale, we need only look to Germany, a country long admired for its engineering excellence and export-driven economy. But as Wolfgang Münchau explains in 'Kaputt: The End of the German Miracle ' , complacency and underinvestment have taken their toll. Germany's efficiency endured as a reputation long after it disappeared as a rea lity. The nation failed to keep pace with the digital era, relying instead in analogue infrastructure and unreliable energy sources. Dependence on Russian gas and costly renewables sent electricity prices soaring - now among the highest in Europe. Meanwhile, Germany's vaunted rail system has become a symbol of national decline. Deutsche Bahn, once synonymous with precision and quality, is now plagued by delays, technical faults, and overcrowding. In 2024, just 62 per cent of long-distance trains arrived on time. In April, Swiss operator SBB cut two cross-border services, fearing Germany's dysfunction would spill over into their own network. The parallels with Australia are sobering. Both nations rode waves of prosperity driven by commodity exports while neglecting the need for reform. Both now face the consequences: rigid regulatory systems, soaring power prices, stagnant productivity, and eroded competitiveness. And in both countries, the signs of decline were ignored until something broke. Germany kept betting against the digital age. Australia, too, risks believing its own myth of resilience and economic strength, long after the underlying conditions have shifted. If we don't act now to address structural weaknesses, the next broken wire, literal or metaphorical, will leave more than just a railway in chaos. Nick Cater is a senior fellow at Menzies Research Centre and a regular contributor to Sky News Australia
The Age
a day ago
- The Age
The obscene priorities in education funding
Heartbreak high I am both heartbroken and furious to learn that the Labor Allan government is choosing to short-change Victorian state school students. The reality at the coalface of under-resourced schools is heartbreaking. Parents might be wondering why their child has a shared class or doesn't have a school nurse or librarian. This is the reality of schools working under a decade-long funding deficit. Teachers are pushed to teach their maximum face-to-face allotment (making up any extra time by moonlighting as a nurse, librarian or team teaching to ensure no minute is left idle). When these overworked teachers are sick, schools are routinely redistributing students to other teachers, pushing class sizes into the 30s. Teachers are being pressed to 'volunteer' to take extra classes to cover absences, anything, to reduce the school's spend on casual teachers. Jacinta Allan pointing to increases in capital funding is a furphy. The building of a hall (projects green lit to help COVID recovery) does nothing to help the tired teachers and undersupported students sitting down to Monday morning assembly. The added insult is watching students walk to the campuses of private schools carrying their full funding allocation to pre-class swimming training in an Olympic-sized pool. Kate Rose, teacher, Rosanna Electoral favours That the Victorian government will provide, as part of an extended drought package, a $5000 grant to Victorian farmers to help their family businesses pull through the temporary drought is laudable. I look forward to similar benevolence to the family-owned milk bars and local butcher businesses facing competition from their local mega-supermarket rivals; or the local family-owned hardware stores and nursery businesses facing challenges from the encroaching DIY megastores; or the family-owned gift shops, florists, clothing and toy shops facing devastation from the expanding big box chains. Why do farming small businesses get favourable government attention? I suspect it's all about electoral politics. Dennis Richards, Cockatoo What's the point? I wish to add my voice to the letters in The Age (30/5) despairing the decision to extend the North West Shelf project. So many of us are trying our hardest to reduce plastic, compost, save water, live sustainably in every way we can with future generations in mind, and it is a huge slap in the face that makes one feel 'what is the point?' Goodness knows what the despair of Indigenous communities is like. Libby Gillingham, Outtrim Yesterday's man It may have escaped Tony Abbott's notice that he is a ″yesterday's man″, which is a nice way of saying he is living in the past. Sussan Ley should ignore him. He is one of the cadre of Liberals, mostly ex-PMs, who are becoming more out of touch with ordinary Australians. Victoria is showing the effects of a poor opposition and listening to conservative Liberals won't improve matters. Adrian Tabor, Point Lonsdale Heed the regions Waleed Aly (Comment, 30/5) has a vision where the National Party becomes a bit teal, and therefore enables the Coalition to compete politically with Labor. It won't happen. Urban Australia needs regional Australia more than vice versa. They feed Australia's cities. They dig the coal and minerals that keep the economy ticking over and Australia's export income high. We repay them with second-rate healthcare, a food market that is stacked against producers, and a steady flow of city refugees who make regional housing unaffordable to locals. If we urbanites occupy their minds at all, what they would see is a bunch of hypocrites who ramble on about the post-carbon economy but in international terms are heavy carbon polluters. Maybe the teals and other city-driven politicians could pay a great deal more attention to regional Australia. Then they might listen to us. Alun Breward, Malvern East Changing Australia Waleed Aly is spot on, especially with the changing demographic of Melbourne's regions. George Megalogenis also noted in his Foreign Affairs essay 'Changing Face of Australia″ that the children of Chinese and Indian migrants are also better educated than those from an Anglo background and this has allowed them to be part of the middle class too. These skilled migrants are a dilemma for some in the major parties who don't acknowledge and understand the nation's changing identity and are still stuck in that Anglo past with a lack of diversity in their candidates. This class divide between the white working classes was reflected in voting patterns as well, especially in the outer suburbs. Mel Smith, Brighton Soul of humanity As a non-religious person, I was moved by Sunday's Faith column (25/5) by Warwick McFadyen where he discussed the virtues of the The Piano. I agree with everything he said and I congratulate the ABC for having produced it. My view, which I believe coincides well with McFadyen's, is 'that music is the soul of humanity'.
