SAS Staff News, November 26

Emails

The misinformation adversely affects the PSA's ability to negotiate improvements in salaries and conditions for our members. For example, recent emails have said that:

1. There are times when SAS Staff sit twiddling their thumbs;
2. SAS Staff regularly take work home;
3. SAS Staff are prepared to put in extra time and not be paid for it.

The PSA has received many complaints about the email chat that is being generated across all schools as members find it grossly interferes with their work. In fact some members have advised the PSA that they are laying formal complaints about it with the Department of Education & Training.

Getting involved in this chat activity can be extremely dangerous. Employee confidentiality must be maintained at all times. It was horrifying to read an email from an administrative manager criticising the performance of an administrative officer employed at the school. More alarmingly, the manager is inviting others to join in and be part of this disgusting act of public betrayal. The PSA views this very seriously.

Hours of Work:

The Department's initial proposal was that administrative managers' hours increase to 35 hours per week and also an extra five days per year. This proposal was reported to members throughout the review process. However, when the DET costed this proposal it decided to withdraw it.

To ensure that all administrative managers work the same hours per day, the PSA negotiated that the GST allocation be distributed evenly amongst administrative managers in the State. This means administrative managers will not be disadvantaged if affected by changing enrolment numbers where they may have to transfer to another school. For part-time administrative managers, i.e. in schools under 50 enrolments, the GST allocation will be used to increase the hours of work per day with the additional hours and corporate data allocation being converted to increase the total hours worked in a week, e.g. Enrolments: 1 to 25
Administrative Manager 14 hours 20 minutes per week

Enrolments: 26 to 50
Administrative Manager: 21 hours per week

In schools which have a full time administrative manager, the corporate data and the additional hours allocation will be converted to permanent hours and will increase the hours of administrative officers, so that the administrative officers' hours are increased by those allocations.

The PSA agreed to these arrangements primarily to ensure that the additional hours would be retained forever.

The additional hours had previously been allocated only for the duration of the review. The Department always has the ability to withdraw casual hours but is always reluctant to change permanent staffing formula. Contrary to comments contained in some emails the proposed increase in hours for administrative managers has been reported in previous PSA SAS Staff newsletters.

It was on this basis that your elected delegates on the Schools Departmental Committee took appropriate action to protect the additional staffing allocations.

Further benefits for the membership are these permanent hours will now be recognised for the whole year not just term time and will be recognised for superannuation, annual leave and extended leave.

The additional school support officer positions will commence from term 3 next year and will be funded from the 2005/06 Department budget. $8,000,000 has been allocated for this purpose. We estimate that the staff allocation will be similar to the current additional staffing allocation.

Flexible Working Hours:

Under the current award SAS Staff may, with the agreement of the Principal, average their working hours over a four-week period.

Under the new award working hours may be averaged over any period up to ten weeks. This means that if you have to work long days in peak workload periods, you may work shorter hours at another time in the term.

Additionally the requirement to work a minimum of these hours in any one school day has been removed, meaning that SAS Staff may take full flex days during the term.

Sue Walsh, PSA President
Fran Collins, Principal Industrial Officer