Manager North Stephen Hughes reflects on the Union successes that have been won in 2024. It has been a successful seven months, culminating in the announcement of Premier Chris Minns that the NSW government will inject $252 million into local government to fund 1,300 apprentices and trainees.

With the election of the Federal and State Labor Governments over the past year or two, the USU through the grit and determination of the USU General Secretary Graeme Kelly OAM, has lobbied and campaigned tirelessly to seek changes to benefit our members and industry sectors and to hold them to the promises they gave whilst in opposition.

The recent NSW Upper House Inquiry into Local Government funding saw the USU delegation of the General Secretary Graeme Kelly OAM, the Manager North Stephen Hughes, the Manager Legal and Industrial Daniel Papps and Professor Brian Dollery from the University of Armidale, a leading academic/expert on Local Government, appear before the Inquiry at the NSW Parliament House.

Numerous other stakeholders, from government departments who participated were questioned by the panel, and many Councils have nominated to appear in meetings that will take place in Sydney as well as in regional areas, with a final report due by August.

A submission was drafted by Professor Dollery, which the USU assisted with, which was not just tabled in the inquiry but sent to every Council in the State, free of charge.

We have also done the same for the Federal Inquiry that is commencing soon, which is also on funding of Local Government at the federal level, which we will be appearing at also.

These Inquiries have only occurred as a result of relentless and tireless lobbying by the USU and especially by the General Secretary.

Another great win

Another big result was the passing of legislation in both houses of the NSW Parliament to wind back the NSW Liberal legislation passed under the Griener State Government back in 1993, that saw the creation of General Manager’s contract roles in replacing Town and Shire Clerks but also the move to place Senior Award staff onto term contracts rather than the Award. On many occasions it didn’t require those employed under these new term contracts to even be qualified or experienced in being appointed under these term contracts.

Chief Engineers, Town Planners, Finance Managers, etc positions covered by the skills based Award and section 349 of the NSW Local Government Act in requiring that appointments were to be made on merit, became a farce when the new criteria for these new term contract positions for senior staff didn’t include in the advertisement as per section 348 of the LG Act, that required that positions be advertised, that they actually had to be qualified or experienced for these senior technical and professional roles.

Many Engineering Departments, Planning and Environmental Departments and Finance Departments have finished up over the years employing Senior Managers with no qualifications or experience in the Departments they were required to manage.

Under these contracts they could also be terminated without notice and without access to unfair dismissal under section 10.3.5 of their contracts as drafted by the Office of Local Government with a maximum of 38 weeks’ pay or less if the contract was due to expire earlier.

Now with the passing of the new legislation by the Minns State Government, as a result of industry consensus achieved between the Award parties, of the three Unions and the Employer’s Association (LGNSW) and following significant lobbying again by the USU at the political level, legislation has now passed that sees the end of new term contracts of Senior Staff under the LG Act with instant access to unfair dismissal while transitioning back from these contracts to being back under the State Award or Enterprise Agreement, with the right to request an early return to the Award before the current contract terms expire which can be disputed if unreasonably refused.

We have also negotiated that those transitioning back to the Award are not to be disadvantaged as a result.

This has taken over 30 years to rectify but the union did not give up.

Securing the future of our industry

Now we have the recent announcement of $252 million to fund new Apprentices/Trainees in NSW Local Government to commence in early 2025.

Again, this came about by the USU through the initiative of the USU General Secretary Graeme Kelly OAM, drafting motions on this matter to go to the 2022 NSW State Labor conference, which then adopted it as party policy in funding 15% in numbers of the NSW local Government workforce numbers in new apprenticeships/traineeships as well as funding the needed infrastructure and teachers needed in TAFE.

The USU wrote to every NSW Council twice in 2023 to make them aware of what we had achieved and in asking them to inform us in writing of how many positions that they would employ if fully funded.

In the end there were 1300 positions identified and that is the number to be funded.

The USU provided this information to the Government and relevant Government Departments and lobbied to actually have funds committed. 

By relentless lobbying and campaigning we got the funding which is a huge achievement and one that USU members can rightly be proud of.