Education & Training: Dual Grading in EPAC

Executive, 31 March 2008, EX29/08

"That the Executive agree that in order to resolve the dual grading dispute in the IRC, the PSA recommends that all positions within the EPAC Directorate have statements of duties prepared, agreed and independently evaluated. The parties would further agree to abide by those evaluations and EPAC Unit staff be employed under the same conditions of employment, with the same promotional opportunities and on the salaries as evaluated".

The PSA has been given leave to intervene in a dispute between the NSW Teachers Federation and the Department of Education and Training in relation to the grading of staff in the Employee Performance and Conduct Unit (EPAC). At present in the Directorate there are public servants sitting side by side and doing the same work as other staff who have a teaching background. The staff with a teaching background are currently paid more than our members by approximately $15,000 pa or more.

The Department decided that when the teaching service positions became vacant they would no longer be advertised as requiring a teaching background and all staff would be employed on the same basis and at the same salary. The Federation, for obvious reasons disagrees with this decision. The dispute is now before J Schmidt in the IRC. The Commission has told both parties to have further discussions and that both the Federation and the Department have to suggest solutions to the dispute and respond to each others proposals. The Commission has also suggested the PSA respond with our member's response to the proposals.

The Department's proposal is that both Senior Education Officer 2 (SEO2) positions in the directorate essentially remain as teaching service positions and that school deputy principals be appointed to these positions for two years at a time. Our members believe that this essentially perpetuates the barrier for those in public service positions of being able to progress to more senior positions within the Unit. It also perpetuates the pay inequity as there will be staff members doing very similar work to the SEO2 Deputy Principals but being remunerated much less.

It is also unclear from the Department's proposal whether these position-holders would be expected to work under administrative conditions (4 weeks leaver per year) or teaching conditions (10 weeks leave per year). This could have considerable implications for the workability of their positions within the unit.

The Federation proposal is that to remove the inequity public service positions could be upgraded to reflect the equivalent skills of our members. We have no argument with this suggestion although it is not quite clear how this would come about. However, the Federation has also proposed moving staff into teaching and non-teaching staff based teams and then assessing the efficacy and efficiency of the teams after 12 months.

Our members are concerned about this proposal for a number of reasons. Firstly, to enable such a trial and assessment to take place will require staff to be moved from one team to another. This will not only disrupt presently successful working arrangements it also has the potential to set one group of workers in competition with another and damage the cohesion of the whole directorate. Secondly, by conducting a 12 month trial this effectively postpones any improvements to equity for existing staff for an additional year. Thirdly, should vacancies occur within the 12 month period, through natural attrition, new staff will be brought into the directorate with opportunities to correct inequities will be lost and existing inequity (both in salary and in opportunity for promotion) further entrenched. Finally, such a trial of competing teams could never be assessed in any way that would be fair and unarguable considering the type and complexity of the work undertaken by the EPAC Directorate.

The PSA has suggested to both the Federation and the DET that all positions within the unit have statements of duties prepared, agreed and independently evaluated. The parties could then all agree to abide by those evaluations and EPAC Unit staff be employed under the same conditions of employment, with the same promotional opportunities and on the salaries as evaluated. This proposal has been put to the DET/TAFE Departmental Committee who have agreed that this is an acceptable way forward.