Ever since news broke in November 2024 that Shoalhaven Council CEO, Robyn Stevens had resigned and council was in significant debt, our members at Shoalhaven council have been left feeling anxious and concerned about their jobs at council.

Their anxiety has not been helped by council.

We have been holding council to account, keeping our members informed and speaking to local media as much as possible and we will continue to do so. Above: Hundreds of Shoalhaven council members, united.

In December 2024, we held a mass member meeting and invited all Shoalhaven Councillors and Mayor Patricia White to attend.

We did this because we wanted councillors to face their workers, answer their questions and concerns and most importantly – pledge that jobs will be safe and contract labour won’t replace their jobs.

Hundreds of our members at Shoalhaven council attended, as did six out of twelve councillors and the Mayor.

The meeting went for over an hour and all but one councillor pledged to keep jobs safe and not use contract labour.

These pledges were made not just to us, but to hundreds of USU members.

By March 2025, the first cut happened – family day care services. An enormously popular and well regarded service that cost council very little, even before counting federal grant funding they received every year.

The decision to cut family day care was voted on by the councillors, twice. The first time – all but one councillor voted in favour of cutting the service. The recession motion (or second time it was voted on) saw it narrowly pass with 8 votes in favour of cutting the service against 5 opposed to cutting it.’

Since then, there have been numerous service reviews across council.

We’ve been holding member meetings across council worksites and sending updates to members via email as much as possible.

We held another mass meeting in July 2025 and we were pleased to see lots of members attend.

This time, there weren’t any councillors or the Mayor in attendance but the meeting did give us and our members the opportunity to ask questions and raise concerns.

When a council runs multiple service reviews while in significant debt, talks about ‘trimming costs’ and gets caught out – it’s more important than ever to hear from your union directly and encourage your fellow workers to join.  

We will continue to advocate for workers at Shoalhaven Council and keep members informed as much as possible. 

Remember: union power comes from members. The more members we have in a workplace, the more impact we can have.