News Flash

General Secretary, Jan McMahon, PSA Councillors, Marg Tonkin, Monte Leverington and Acting Chief Industrial Officer, Gayle Peak met with the Chief Executive, Keith Bartley of DECD and Principle Policy Advisor, Stacey Lewis, on Monday 31st October 2011.

This meeting marked the commencement of ongoing consultative meetings to be held with the Chief Executive.

The items discussed included:-

1.      ENTERPRISE BARGAINING

The PSA sought continuation of previous arrangements which allowed PSA to consult with members regarding Enterprise Bargaining during paid time. This consultative mechanism assisted the Department in being able to establish that the requirements to consult with staff during the Enterprise Bargaining process have been met.

2.      INTEGRATION OF FAMILIES SA INTO EDUCATION

The Chief Executive indicated that no concrete proposals had been developed at this early stage. The CE confirmed his commitment to open and transparent consultative arrangements to discuss any proposed changes. The CE did indicate that his priority was to improve the service delivery, and if the current structures and arrangement worked well, there would be no intention to change them.

3.      CONSULTATION

The Chief Executive accepted the PSA's request for regular consultative forums. It was agreed that monthly meetings be established initially as there was likely to be many issues arising from the discussion paper "Directions for the Reform of the School Services Officer Workforce" and Families SA being placed with Education and Child Development.

The regular PSA worksite representative meetings will continue and these meetings will take matters forward to the Departmental consultative forums.

4.      PROFESSIONALS WORKING IN DECD

The Chief Executive confirmed that there were no proposals being considered to change the employment arrangements for professionals working in DECD. Whilst in the future there maybe proposals to have professionals working from school sites, the professionals will continue to be employed centrally, under current industrial arrangements, remaining  under the coverage of the PSA and the South Australian Government Wages Parity (Salaried) Enterprise Agreement.

5.      SSO CLASSIFICATIONS AND PERMANENCY

The PSA raised the issues again, about the large percentage of SSOs that continue to be classified as SSO1 despite having several years experience working in this role. The PSA is seeking improvements to the reclassification process to ensure that SSO1 classification is clearly an entry level classification.

The PSA also raised concerns that this last permanency process excluded SSOs with a small number of permanent hours from increasing the number of permanent hours. There are now many examples of SSOs with over 10 years experience having just 15 permanent hours, whilst in the same school,  SSOs with just a little over two years service being made permanent for 37.5 hours.

The issue of the casual nature of the workforce was discussed.

The PSA will continue to pursue these issues with the Department.