Water & Ports
Members Fight Creeping Outsourcing
- Details
- Published on Thursday, 26 June, 2008
Sydney Water’s attempts to outsource work are spreading throughout it services, affecting members in service desk, desktop support services and those involved in the security zones project.
As part of a reorganisation of the Service Desk and Desktop Support, Sydney Water proposes to remove 3 permanent IT positions and remove the 24/7 roster (a 24 hour help line for people with IT issues) handing over these positions to DELL. This outsourcing will cut pay and skills development of members.
ASU member and affected employee Matt Cowie says “The impact on customer satisfaction will be massive. DELL workers simply don’t have the skill-set or local systems knowledge of current staff. In my experience contractors don’t have the ‘carefactor’ of full-time employees either, since they typically don’t rely on a single employer for their business”.
Resolutions passed at a members meeting demand that management acknowledge the current proposals are outsourcing and follow the Sydney Water Agreement in this regard. When it comes to IT, the succession planning of Sydney Water management is simply to outsource, outsource, outsource. The cover story of the latest edition of Splash says that Sydney Water has a skills retention problem. The solution is to upskill existing staff and stop the high turnover of new staff, not send the jobs outside.
Sydney Water has also failed to consult the union properly over the tender for the Security Zones project and is planning to remove work that would normally be done by permanent staff.
According to the recent Services Union of Australia report prepared by leading Australian economists, the most comprehensive analysis of Australian labour market trends ever undertaken, 850, 000 service sector jobs face the chop as new economic modelling projects the biggest expatriation of Australian jobs in our history. The clock is ticking for concerted action to address a vicious cycle of job loss, skills and competencies loss.
STOP PRESS
Although the dispute continues, Sydney Water has been forced to take the proposal to outsource the 24/7 support roster off the table. This is a significant win for ASU members and the customers that use the 24/7 support service.
