Darebin City Council: do not share the August 27 newsletter
29 August 2024
Your ASU representatives attended the Fair Work Commission on 23 August because council had not provided relevant information in accordance with its obligations under clause 26 of the Darebin City Council Enterprise Agreement.
Council’s legal obligation when introducing major change is to ‘provide all relevant information about the proposed changes, including the nature of the changes proposed, expected impact, and any other matters likely to affect employees.’
In seeking to implement its proposed restructure, council refused to provide the current and proposed organisational charts, and details of changes to position descriptions. The ASU lodged a dispute in the Fair Work Commission to force council to comply with its legal obligations.
As a result of the FWC conference on 23 August, council provided that information.
This information was distributed to members on 27 August.
Council now has concerns that it provided the union with confidential and/or private information.
We have taken all possible steps to remove this information from the public domain and ask that members do not share or distribute our newsletter of 27 August outside of the workplace.
Council has attempted to blame the ASU for an alleged “privacy” or “data” breach. The information provided to the ASU was not marked confidential, private or sensitive.
Further, clause 26.1.1(c) of the Darebin EA specifically states that: ‘In providing the relevant information, management shall not be required to disclose any information, the disclosure of which would be detrimental to Council’s interests (including confidential information)’.
Council knew that we sought all relevant information (in accordance with the EA) for the purpose of consultation and seeking feedback from ASU members affected by the proposed changes. And we were entitled to the reasonable belief council would not provide anything that should not have ordinarily been available to Darebin employees.
It is not the ASU’s responsibility to determine which council information is private or confidential, or to go through 434 pages of information to redact anything that may be sensitive before sharing information with the very people we exist to represent. That information should never have been provided in the first place.
As soon as council notified the ASU of its concerns, we took immediate steps to remedy the situation, and now request that members do not share the 27 August newsletter outside of the workplace.
The ASU and Darebin Council had lengthy discussions in the Fair Work Commission about the definition of “relevant information”. That is what council was required to provide. That is all the ASU expected to receive.
If council handed over information that they shouldn’t have, they must accept responsibility for that.