Livingstone Shire Council - Joint Consultative Committee update!

Members On the 8^th May The Services Union participated in the Livingstone Regional Council Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) on your behalf. I attended the meeting as the new Central Queensland Organiser, along with your Union Delegate David McDowell.

Council provided an overview of spending along with a review of structural changes at the meeting.  Concerns were raised by the Union around the ongoing vacancies in engineering, which is a long-standing issue requiring resolution. Staff turnover has slowed, the average age of staff is now 47, with the average length of service being 7.9 years.

At the meeting clarification was sought regarding the Central Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils (CQROC) plan to amalgamate water services through a Queensland Water Regional Alliance Program (QWRAP). It is our understanding following this meeting that there are no further plans to advance this idea. 

The Council shared at the meeting a new Psychological Health, Safety and Wellbeing Procedure.  We are interested to monitor the effectiveness of the procedure, so if you have first-hand experience of this process, please feel free to provide feedback to your delegates or organiser ([email protected] ). Any comments will be anonymised and can be raised at the next JCC meeting.  

It is also worth noting that there are some positive changes to the law in the powers of workplace Health & Safety Reps (HSR’s) happening from the end of July. These changes mean HSR’s can choose their own training provider and be fully remunerated for attending training.  HSR’s will also have more power to direct the business to cease unsafe work and be able to obtain information relevant to their work group. If you are interested in becoming a workplace HSR or would like to find out more, please get in contact with Steve Duncan-Rice or speak to your delegates Dave and Jo. 

Finally, we would like to encourage any member who is interested in being a union delegate to let us know. Delegates play an important role in ensuring the union can be responsive and proactive in the workspace and it can be a very rewarding role. If you want to know more, please get in touch via the above email or have a chat with your delegates to get an understanding of what’s involved.