More Chiefs, and a lot less Indians

The restructure of TAFE and the Department of Education and Training announced last week slashes frontline staff while increasing senior management staff.

The current senior positions are:
1 Director General,
4 Deputy Director Generals,
7 Assistant Director Generals and
4 General Managers.

The proposed top positions are:
1 Director General,
4 Deputy Director Generals,
1 TAFE Commissioner,
19 Assistant Director Generals and
1 General Manager.

An increase of 16 to 26 (62 percent) in the top echelon.

Each of these extra managers will require support staff who will have to be dragged away from frontline duties.

The effect of this stacking of the senior ranks will be to add extra layers of reporting. Getting approvals for things such as capital works and building maintenance, teacher allocations, etc, are likely to be slowed.

In many instances the extra layer will slow reporting to the Minister, which will flow on to the Minister's answers to constituents and to Parliament.

One of the reasons given for this restructure is that the Department is overly bureaucratic. It is the senior management which is responsible for the bureaucratic remoteness the "community at large" is concerned about. Expanding the senior ranks will magnify the problem.

When the public talk of bureaucrats or fat cats they mean people like those who run DET, not the people who answer phones, staff the counters, punch in the teachers' pay calculations, organise a carpenter to fix the windows, develop a curriculum, etc.

The frontline employees of TAFE and DET were insulted and quite rightly furious at being called bureaucrats by the Minister

The frontline staff will be reduced by 700, or about 20 percent. These are the people who deliver services to schools, TAFE, business and public. These are the people who actually do the day to day work of recruiting and paying teachers, planning, building, maintaining and protecting schools and colleges, answering calls from teachers and the public, supplying computer services, etc,

Further information:
Sue Walsh, President, 9220 0935,
Greg Shaw, Senior Industrial Officer, 9220 0929

News Alert 1

PSA and Teachers Federation members are having a joint rally outside Education Head Office on tomorrow, July 3.

It's at 12.00 noon in Farrer Place (on the Bent St end of the building).

The PSA Working Party on the restructure will be meeting with management before the rally.

Further information from Greg Shaw, Snr Industrial Officer, 9220 0929, 0408 474 224

News Alert 2

PSA members will leaflet and demonstrate outside the Country Labor Conference in Tamworth this weekend.

The rally will start at 8.30 am on Saturday. It's at West Tamworth Leagues Club.

Further information from Peter Szacsvay, PSA Regional Organiser, Tamworth, 6766 5488