And yet, here we are. They’ve been caught doing it again.
The latest revelation is that they have decided to exempt themselves from a Government law brought in about three months ago.
The law prevents employees who earn more than $200,000 from taking personal grievance cases against their bosses if they are fired. In other words, there will be no golden handshake if you’ve been sacked while earning that kind of money.
But guess what? Wellington City Council bosses decided they weren’t going to follow that law and exempted 42 of their staff from it. That’s quite unbelievable, because the law is intended to make it easier for employers to remove incompetent managers who have been doing very little for years on end.
And Wellington City Council knows it has a problem. A recent report suggests they may have a couple of hundred staff they need to get rid of. They have one of the highest staffing levels in the country when compared with other councils.
Each household in Wellington is effectively paying for 19 fulltime equivalent staff. In Upper Hutt, just up the road, households are supporting only 10 staff. Wellington City Council: 19 staff.
As I say, they didn’t tell elected councillors they made this decision. However, a councillor found out, started asking questions and it turns out it was true. Technically, the council can argue it didn’t have to inform elected councillors -this is an employment decision they can make themselves.
But even the mayor, Andrew Little, has said this should have gone to the council for signoff. It’s not a good look.
And it’s becoming a bit of a running theme, hasn’t it? Not just in Wellington but around the country: unelected staff making decisions in secret that ratepayers probably wouldn’t be happy about if they knew.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.
11 comments:
The motivation for such actions? What could it be?
Corrupt and the top layer should get the Clear your desk by 4.00 memo
LNF : clear your desk now while this security guard watches.
Too much destructive stuff happens with vindictive staff.
Apocryphal story - the German factory bombed in WW2, stopped producing anything, but the management shuffled paper about for a year later.
I expect exactly the same thing would happen in Wellington Council and government offices.
Do these people have any job satisfaction other than spending someone else's money ?
Big government is doing a takeover of local by stealth, capping their rates and at the same time not providing proper funding. NACT accelerating the downfall of New Zealand, regular kiwis suffering while the corporates keep on cashing in. Destruction of democracy writ large and the people do nothing.
Imagine how productive the country could be if we removed these kinds of millstones
While this is another off the carts case of unelected bureaucrats not working for the rate/tax payers. I am sure that similar miss management is occurring across the board š¤¦♂️š¤¦♂️
LNF, great idea, however, what you have failed to take into account is the vast majority of these councillors are lefties. The motivation is because they are probably the most useless incompetent council in the southern hemisphere. So these lefties know they can't be sacked easily. Absolute disgraceful behavior, but it's the left at work as usual. Welly have what they wanted.
"Big government is doing a takeover of local by stealth, capping their rates..."
Aha, anon @12.43! A WCC employee, as I live and breathe.
Of course rates should be capped. Councils must learn to manage with constrained budgets. It isn't for you to commit the rest of us to rate increases which we cannot afford.
"Destruction of democracy...."
Yes indeed, we've seen a bit of that in local government, haven't we! Maori wards, along with the appointment of unelected iwi members to committees, and giving them voting rights. Now that's undemocratic.
Note the topic of this post. How about you comment on the lack of democracy evinced by what senior management in WCC has done, instead of ranting about the current government?
I was a fan of three waters. Now we have waste on the beaches, businesses wrecked. And the government says no spending money! Down the gurgler we go. Thanks, neolibs.
Desterre sounds like the boomer generation that didn’t want to chip in any money to maintain critical infrastructure. Too many of those around, pulling up ladders and burning the future for the next generations.
Interesting use of language from desterre here. Any comment can be reframed as a rant, however holding our politicians to account with critique has long been a foundation of open democracy. Shutting down dissent is only the type of thing you see in a dictatorship. Central government bears responsibility for so much of the country, even more so when they offer solutions at a local level, only for a change of wind direction to then rescind those solutions and then take an additional step to block off alternatives. The result? You can see for yourself.
"I was a fan of three waters."
I was not. Theft by government, is what it was.
"...waste on the beaches, businesses wrecked..."
Surely you aren't suggesting that the 3 waters concept would have prevented the Moa Point disaster? I have a bridge to sell you...
"...the boomer generation that didn’t want to chip in any money to maintain critical infrastructure."
And this is how you give yourself away as a WCC employee. That isn't true, you know. But that doesn't stop WCC employees from repeating it ad nauseam. Neglect of critical infrastructure happened over the objections of many of us, and happened only in the last couple of triennia. WCC rates weren't artificially low: that myth has been repeatedly debunked.
"Any comment can be reframed as a rant..."
The commenter in question - anon@ 12.43 - derailed the comment thread by launching into a rant about the government, not in any way pertinent to the topic of this post.
"Shutting down dissent is only the type of thing you see in a dictatorship."
In NZ recently, there's been a pretty determined attempt by the woke left to shut down dissent: they try to deplatform opinions they don't like and don't want anyone to hear. So I guess by that definition, NZ is a dictatorship.
Now: anent the topic of this post. I had heard about this elsewhere, and I'm appalled by it. Like many citizens, I find it difficult to believe that the senior management of WCC - apparently with the connivance of the new CEO - could presume to exempt themselves from following the law. Yet here we are. I see nothing at all which justifies what appears to be insouciant flouting of legal requirements. The arrogance of these people!
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