TasWater’s fly-in consultants at $1000 a day

TasWater is paying fly-in consultants more than $1000 a day to do work its own employees should be doing, says Professionals Australia, the body representing senior staff.

TasWater’s own scientists, technical specialists, managers and engineers say their confidence in TasWater’s ability to effectively manage the state’s water has reached an alltime low.

Tasmanian director of Professionals Australia Luke Crowley said that senior staff were extremely concerned that if TasWater continued to lose skilled employees and put on consultants, TasWater’s tactics would ultimately cost the end-user through ongoing business inefficiency.

“We are concerned about the amount of money being spent on consultants and the risks associated with using consultants for core tasks.

“TasWater is flying in expensive, external consultants sometimes from interstate to fill roles that local in house professionals could and should be doing. While these consultants are being paid up to $1200 a day, local staff are being offered poor contracts on a fraction of these rates.

In a move designed to have their voices heard, Senior staff at Tas Water such as scientists, project managers, accountants, engineers, IT professionals and analysts have taken the unprecedented step of applying to the Fair Work Commission for the right to participate in collective bargaining.

These employees want to be included in broader staff negotiations as a result of extreme dissatisfaction with TasWater’s ongoing practice of offering poor contracts to senior staff, combined with a refusal to negotiate fairly with individuals around their contracts. Instead of this approach saving the organisation money, TasWater is now increasing its use of expensive external consultants to act in the day to day functions of the organisation.

“Senior technical staff are also worried about the risks that come with using external consultants to perform fundamental roles. They are now seeing consultants overseeing the work of other consultants and contractors, effectively removing many of the checks and balances that keep our water supply safe and reliable and delivered in a cost effective manner.” Mr Crowley said.

“In a recent survey of senior staff, less than 20% of respondents felt that TasWater had sufficient internal capacity to keep the state’s water assets functioning effectively. A lack of ‘in house’ capacity to detail and assess the work of consultants has been proven to lead to significant cost blowouts in other infrastructure organisations and projects, such as the Building Education Revolution program and we are seeking to avoid this at Taswater.

“By offering poor contracts and flatly refusing to negotiate with individuals, TasWater has already lost a number of senior staff with detailed understanding and knowledge of Tasmania’s water system.”

“Given TasWater’s current practices, senior technical staff know they won’t get a fair go in negotiations on their own. They are applying to the Fair Work Commission to join negotiations with the rest of the staff. Senior staff simply want one of the fundamental Australian workplace rights, to bargain as a group for their working conditions. Taswaters refusal to provide this willingly is disgraceful.

Professionals Australia Lodged a Scope order with the FWC and the FWC has set down a hearing date for Tuesday the 1st of July 2014 at 9:30 am

Professionals Australia has lodged the order on behalf of members at TasWater who the company is seeking to exclude from the current Enterprise Agreement (EA) negotiations.