From Monday the 1st of September through until Sunday the 30th of November 2025 I have commenced filling in as my period of Acting USU General Secretary while our actual General Secretary Graeme Kelly OAM enjoys his well-deserved and first decent break in his almost half a century of his working life.

This digital magazine again sees numerous positive stories regarding the ongoing achievements of our USU Officials, Staff, Delegates and Member Activists.

These articles should resonate where similar issues that require action are occurring and should provide our members and delegates with both the confidence and knowledge that the USU, YOUR UNION is always ready to advise and assist if matters are brought to our attention with the information required for us to give full and correct advice and to then take the appropriate action. Check out my Delegate’s Conference report here.

New USU Delegate’s Folder

In the past, my Rutherford office admin staff have put together a very useful Delegate’s tool, being a USU Delegate’s folder based upon feedback from myself, my Industrial Officer Noel Martin and my Officials.

The USU is now seeking to adopt an updated version for all current and future USU Delegates, Co Delegates, Site Contacts and even USU Activists, which sets out to explain the different levels and duties of our Delegates, while seeking to greatly expand our Delegate numbers.

There is no legal limit on how many workplace Delegates we can have, the more the better that we can look after our members, to represent our members, to run and win campaigns and to grow the Union, while also identifying, training and building our Delegate numbers who may seek to one day take on a full time role with the Union as part of our succession planning.   

This should become available within several months.

Same Job Same Pay

The Federal Labor Government passed legislation recently that sought to prevent Companies undercutting Award Wages by employing Labour Hire Staff instead of directly employed staff who would have been covered by their Industry Award or Enterprise Agreement.

In the Mining Sector in particular, it had been shown that many Labor Hire Employees who were performing the same duties as directly employed workers were receiving significantly less pay, often in the tens of thousands of dollars over a year.

The Albanese led Government legislated to correct this by introducing same job same pay legislation.

This legislation is federal and therefor only covered workers in the federal IR System.

NSW Local Government works under a State based Industry Award, which has been somewhat meaningless to Labour Hire Staff working in NSW Councils, as they are in the Federal IR System under a very inferior Federal Modern Award, especially when it comes to wages.

Currently there is consensus within the NSW Award Industrial Parties, supported by the three Unions of which the USU is the largest in membership and coverage as well as the Employer’s Association, the Departmental and Political Levels.

Soon, new NSW legislation will provide those working for Labour Hire Companies in NSW Councils and potentially the rest of the NSW State Public Sector with the right to the Award rates of pay for the directly employed workers doing the same job.

This will result in workers getting paid equally and will mean that cheaper and lower wages can’t be used to undercut those current rates of pay under the NSW State System.

 This will be a huge victory and will result in reducing the misuse of these cheaper and insecure forms of employment in favour of permanent properly paid jobs.       

Stephen Hughes
Acting General Secretary
United Services Union