THE current controversy surrounding potential job losses of five local parking officers is continuing to gain traction, with Australian Services Union Victoria/Tasmania lead organiser, Ty Lockwood meeting with the directly effected officers last week to discuss the way forward.
Ty met with the officers and will now be attempting to gain additional information from council with regards to their decision to outsource the parking services before compiling a formal response to council.
Ty said, “Following council making the preliminary decision to outsource the parking services, we became involved when they notified members they were looking to potentially tender out the function. We disagree on a fundamental level that these are council jobs for local people.
“Met with the five parking officers who are directly affected. Discussed the enterprise agreement and how it looks should council decide to outsource them and what that means and what we can do to help them moving forward.
“If council is saying they are looking for more efficiencies in giving this service to a contractor, they are not going to find it as the contractor is going to charge the council the same as they are currently paying, so there is no efficiency here. There won’t be for at least 18 months, which is when the enterprise agreement expires. Until that point we are saying we think council should work with us to genuinely review this. We’ve offered to sit down with council and they haven’t done that yet.
“The parking officers have until February 1 to take up their redundancy packages.
“The parking officers are feeling a bit caught in the middle. They are saying that management decisions and the direction that the council and councillors are pushing effects how they can enforce the street laws.
“The future has already been written with this and we’re not sure why this is happening.
“If a contractor gets this job and comes in very aggressively, the community are going to be in uproar. It has happened elsewhere and it will happen here.”
