Water & Ports

Sydney Water Civil Maintenance members: Trouble at Cowpasture Road

Details

Published on Thursday, 05 March, 2009

Some weeks ago there was an incident where allegedly a supervisor in Cowpasture Road assaulted a production employee (or member) by punching shut a key box that the employee was looking though. This alleged assault occurred in the presence of at least one eye witness.

Our member reported the incident to the ASU and to Sydney Water management. Both the ASU and management have taken statements independent of each other however Sydney Water are responsible for the overall investigation.

It is now several weeks since the investigation started and management maintain that they are not in a position to make a decision about its outcome for several more weeks to come. At a union meeting held in Cowpasture on Wednesday 4 March members expressed frustration at the delay however decided to continue to wait until management have finished the process.

Sydney Water attack victim to save aggressive manager

In an obvious attempt to protect their own, management through the recently appointed Operations Manager, Peter Djendjinovic, has now counter charged our member with three baseless and petty counts of misconduct.

Members and delegates view such a counter charge as an attempt to intimidate not only the member who made the complaint, but to deter all other members from making future complaints about management.

During the union meeting held in Cowpasture Road on Wednesday 4 members demanded that the charges be immediately withdrawn. Furthermore they are demanding that the new manager of Civil Delivery (John Sanpedro)  launch an independent investigation into his Operations Manager’s decision to counter charge a victim of assault by a manager (see resolution passed below). Members resolved to take any action deemed appropriate to ensure that Djendjinovic and any others are investigated and now await a response to their demands.