• Overtime blow out a sham
• Community First Responder

 

Overtime blow out a sham

The idiotic KPI pressure gauges on the Department’s intranet site are a good metaphor for the silliness afflicting FRNSW generally these days. The annual overtime budget for 2012/13 is facing huge overruns not because of increased staff absences (the opposite applies) or even increased operations, but because it was set so pathetically low at $10M that it was never going to be met. Compare it with previous years:

Financial Year	Perm & Retd total spend	Overtime spend	Overtime as % of total
99/00	$167.9 M	$17.7 M	10.5 %
00/01	$173.6 M	$18.1 M	10.4 %
01/02	$181.9 M	$19.5 M	10.7 %
02/03	$196.3 M	$20.9 M	11.0 %
03/04	$209.3 M	$20.1 M	10.0 %
04/05	$222.6 M	$20.1 M	9.0 %
05/06	$240.3 M	$21.8 M	9.1 %
06/07	$258.6 M	$19.0 M	7.3 %
07/08	$271.6 M	$21.3 M	7.8 %
08/09	$290.5 M	$19.8 M	6.8 %
09/10	$307.5 M	$17.1 M	5.5 %
10/11	$316.3 M	$24.0 M	7.5 %
11/12	$323.2 M	$25.0 M	7.7 %
12/13	$324.6 M (estimate)	$10.0 M (budgeted)	3.1 %

 

Since 2000, the annual spend on firefighter overtime has averaged 8.7% of total firefighter wages, so both the 5 and 10 year trends were falling, not climbing. The inevitable and self-imposed “overtime blow out” in 2012/13 is simply a contrived prop with which the Minister and the Department are now using to beat and blame firefighters in order to justify their irresponsible budget cuts.

Community First Responder

The IRC’s Justice Staff has scheduled the work value determination (the size of any allowance or extra payment) for retained members performing Community First Responder (CFR) for hearing on 2 April. This is not a new issue, having remained a “leave reserved” claim by the Union since the 2008 Awards.

The Union successfully argued that there was nothing in O’Farrell’s new IR laws which prevents the IRC from determining the size of any wage increases based on work value, only that the IRC can’tactually award those increases unless there are offsetting savings found elsewhere to pay for them. The Department argued that employee-related cost savings should be found first, but the Union countered with the obvious: that you can’t know how much you need to find until you’ve valued the work.

This case is significant, and believed to be unprecedented in the new world of O’Farrell’s IR reforms which were meant to extinguish work value cases altogether. It is also timely given the O’Farrell Government’s release last month of its “Reform Plan for NSW Ambulance”, which confirms its intention to roll out first responder across the state, and across FRNSW. More to follow.

Darin Sullivan
President and Acting State Secretary