A tranche of 950 proposed retrenchments at Transport for NSW, which have put the jobs of everyday, award-based public servants on the chopping block, could yet become a scenario that extends across other departments and agencies.<\/p>\n
After a weekend that saw the Public Service Association of NSW unload on both the transport minister and secretary over the proposed mass sackings, it seems the issue of the high cost of getting a member of the NSW senior executive to take a hike extends right across the state bureaucracy, thanks largely to laws and regulations governing terminations.<\/p>\n
The regulations and legislation in effect are the\u00a0Government Sector Employment Regulation 2014\u00a0and\u00a0the Government Sector Employment Act. Both were introduced by the NSW Public Service Commission<\/a>, which was\u00a0established in 2011.<\/p>\n The inaugural NSW Public Service Commission was headed by Graeme Head, and pushed through many of the policy reforms that arguably repositioned NSW to become one of the most progressive and innovative jurisdictions<\/a> in terms of customer service and delivery. Chiefly through the creation of Service NSW, the state fused together different functions from registry, identity, and revenue into a single transactional hub, online and in person.<\/p>\n Head is now secretary of the NSW Department of Customer Service, where around 40 job losses have been flagged<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the public sector reforms spearheaded by the previous government, which broadly sought to allow the injection of private sector acumen and talent into major agencies to lift their performance, are now being cited as a handbrake to departmental efficiency.<\/p>\n One of the biggest obstacles to NSW public service leadership reform more than a decade ago was the lack of attraction of private sector talent, and how NSW government appointment deals carried too much career risk if executives could be sacked on a whim.<\/p>\n The sacking risk was partly addressed through workplace conditions rather than compensation to emphasise the need for SES appointees to hang around to finish reforms.<\/p>\n The workplace changes followed tectonic machinery of government changes, like the formation of Service NSW (and the Department of Customer Service) and the creation of Transport for NSW, which required the dissolution of previously statutory agencies.<\/p>\n The trade-off for the previous government was the perceived ability to attract committed changemakers from the likes of banking (customer service and transaction reform) and infrastructure (project discipline, continuity and delivery) to see through major policy reforms.<\/p>\n The policy was not devoid of logic, given that public transport was a performative mess crowned by the Tcard disaster<\/a>, with Labor in power for a decade, that delivered litigation and headlines rather than passenger utility.<\/p>\n To bait the hook for refugees from banking and infrastructure, taking a 50%-75% pay cut to salve their civic conscience, an arguable \u2018boot-it-and-lose-it\u2019 regime was applied to new hires.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the employment is otherwise terminated under section 41 of the act \u2014 an amount equal to the executive\u2019s remuneration package for a period of 38 weeks or for the period remaining on the term of the contract (whichever is the lesser) [will apply].<\/p>\n That\u2019s nine months\u2019 pay, also known as danger money. But it also says a lot about what it took to replace career public servants with reformers willing to make waves by changing \u2014 arguably breaking \u2014 culture and norms.<\/p>\n Turns out the 38-week pay on redundancy is a cap, too.<\/p>\n