Just when you thought we couldn’t get any more great inside NRMA information, another cracker has landed in the Crikey inbox. Enjoy this first item from a management perspective and then enjoy a strong response from “Mrs Patrolman”.

Crikey’s story on the NRMA last Wednesday was wrong in a significant number of ways.

The NRMA Board dispute is not over a disagreement between Tony Stuart and Ross Turnbull but between Turnbull and the Board and in fact Stuart was not even in the room nor had he any hand in the decision of the Board to vote to remove Ross Turnbull as President of the NRMA over substantial corporate governance issues.

Turnbull had problems last year over the improper use of his credit card and was told at that time that any further breaches of Directors responsibilities and the Directors Code of Conduct would result in the strongest action being taken against him.

Turnbull, who has substantial form for doing his own thing and ignoring normal company practices and procedures, ran true to course and repeatedly disregarded Board decisions.

He has also substantially overshot the budget for his office by several hundred thousand dollars which shocked the Board, particularly after last year’s credit card fiasco. It is rumoured that several of the consultants Turnbull has retained earned hundreds of thousands in fees as well as getting to have lunch regularly with Sir Roscoe Lunchalot.

He has also repeatedly interfered in the management of the NRMA, again contrary to Board decisions and directions to such an extent that he has breached CEO Tony Stuart’s contract of employment entitling him to a very hefty payout from the NRMA of about $1 million.

Supposedly the position over negotiations with the unions was not to crush the unions but rather the Board, long before Stuart arrived, determined that there were a number of issues regarding operational and management matters in regard to patrols that needed to be addressed in order to make sure the managers could and would manage the NRMA and ensure that it remained competitive in the face of serious competition.

It is interesting to contemplate Board members like Michael Hill, Judi Stack, Alan Evans, Laurie Maher and Geoff Toovey with their Labor backgrounds, going along with attempts to crush the union though some like Graham Blight (ex NFF) and Jon Brett do have form in playing tough with unions. The Board’s instructions to management were that the EBA negotiations were to be conducted on the basis that in return for an 11% pay rise to patrols then there had to be a quid pro quo which would be to ensure the managers could manage because at present it is the AMWU who runs the NRMA show because of poor management in the past and a series of agreements in past EBA negotiations which gives the AMWU more power than management.

The number of jobs being done was decreasing but each job was costing more whilst country jobs done by the Country Service Centres where there is no union presence cost about 20% less than city jobs, even though the travel distance is greater. Metropolitan Patrols only spend about 25% of their time actually working on breakdowns, the rest of the time is either idle time or travelling or in some cases actually being at home in bed waiting for a call whilst on penalty rates. Great job if you can get it which is pretty hard given there is a very low turnover of patrol staff.

Metropolitan Patrolmen for example earn between $85,000-$105,000 per annum for a thirty eight hour week, paid meal breaks which only start when they get home and they also they get paid for travel to and from home, rosters cannot be changed without several weeks notice so when heavy demand occurs because of weather or some patrolmen are off on leave, sickness etc its all on overtime. Some patrols are exempted from working weekends which puts a heavier load on the remaining patrols.

The NRMA Management offered a deal of a thirty five hour week and some changes in conditions and a guarantee of no forced redundancies for five years plus voluntary redundancy with very generous payments and an 11% pay increase over two years in return for some changes such as allowing shorter notice for roster changes and the ability to use contractors in the metropolitan fringes in emergencies.

The union were reluctant to give up the control they had of the NRMA and had conveyed to Turnbull that if a Special General Meeting was held then they would drag out all the dirt they had on him in the SGM campaign. It is believed that it was not the fact that the union might win the vote that worried Turnbull but rather that the Union had something on Turnbull that not even his closest supporters knew about.

It is understood the rest of the Board (bar Turnbull) were quite relaxed about the SGM and felt they would win the vote.

Turnbull is also caught in NSW Labor politics at the moment as his new best friend and highly paid (by the NRMA) adviser is John McCarthy QC. McCarthy is seen to have a Svengali like influence over Turnbull.

McCarthy’s goal was to keep the AMWU happy and to keep them off the back of his mate Bob Carr and he was instrumental and initiated the meetings between Turnbull and the AMWU Assistant State Secretary John Parkin.

McCarthy is also behind Turnbull’s plan to ditch his fellow existing Board members from his team and run a new team comprising mayors and other local pollies which with union support will get Turnbull’s new team elected in next year’s elections and bring the NRMA back under ALP control. It will also get rid of the current pesky board members, some of whom want him to adhere to good corporate governance standards and live a more modest life style on the members’ money. It will take some time for the new team to wake up to Turnbull’s profligacy with the members’ money and then even longer to do something about it. It was critical for this scheme of Turnbull’s to keep the union boys onside and become the workers’ new friend so they would organise the votes for him and his new team. Therefore, he had to undermine management in the enterprise bargaining negotiations by having secret meetings with the Unions without Stuart’s knowledge in order to broker a deal which was organised by his new mate, McCarthy QC.

The word is if Turnbull comes back Tony Stuart will walk with a $1 million payout after twelve months work which the contract that Turnbull negotiated with Stuart provides for if he is not allowed to manage the NRMA without board interference.

Not bad for a Board which supposedly eighteen months ago was going to make the NRMA more efficient and at the same time provide better services. All they have done so far is jacked up the members fees, let Turnbull rack up a $1 million in Presidential expenses, gave the last CEO an $850,000 golden handshake, paid out several million dollars to get rid of a number of senior managers and forgive Turnbull for behaviour which in any other Board in Australia would see him sacked and never allowed to return. The good mail is that after sin binning him for a few days the Board will capitulate and reinstate Turnbull and give him his credit cards back and ask him nicely to promise not to misbehave again.

It is about time that members organised a petition to sack this board before they cost them several more millions.

Turnbull is certainly a very expensive President and makes Nick Whitlam reign as President look very parsimonious by comparison and the rest of the Board are no better and deserve to go.

ends

In defence of the humble patrolman

By Mrs Patrolman

I feel that as I am the wife of an NRMA patrolman who has worked for the NRMA for nearly 20 years, that I would like to bring to your attention a few corrections that I feel should be made to your latest article “Time to Sack the Board Again”.

To do justice to a story from a Patrol’s point of view you would need the amount of paper that’s included in the printing of the Encyclopedia Britannica to come somewhere near what has happened since the infamous 1998 management restructure. At this time anybody with knowledge of how the business ran or anybody that had been there for any amount of time were removed from the business as they were a threat to the likes of Peter Steele who somehow remains in a senior management position after all the restructures that the NRMA has had. Where the nick name Teflon or Stainless seem to be the only things that have stuck to him. What the Patrols are now left with in the Management area are people who either cannot or will not make decisions for fear of being top of the list in the next round of NRMA management restructures. There are actually managers in NRMA Road Service that have the ability to be able to work with the Patrol force to make this business run successfully, as it has in the past, but are constantly restricted and maligned by more senior management who have their own agenda. Whether that be for the introduction of nontractors into the Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong and Canberra Metropolitan areas or for other career advancements.

Firstly I would like to congratulate you on Wednesday’s article “How the NRMA imploded – again” by Louie. This article verified the information that the AMWU and the Patrol Representatives have been informing the Patrol force about over the past 2 years of so-called ‘negotiations’.

To move onto your current article – one feels that the NRMA have had their say in this article which is what they’ve been trying to tell the Board for the last couple of years as to why they need to change all the Patrols working conditions, and it’s the same sad handful of reasons that keep popping up with a certain Peter Steele’s name behind them. As if he’d know how to run the business!

Let me list below several discrepancies that need correcting:

1. NRMA has not negotiated with Patrol Representatives since probably mid last year where their negotiation criteria seemed to change from sitting across a table and negotiating to sending complete EA documents to Patrols for them to comment on rather than the Representatives negotiating on their behalf. I think my husband has received 6 or so of these documents through the mail. This is hardly what I would call negotiations.

2. My understanding is that there is a decreasing number of jobs across the state and there is no arguing that. But I believe through what I’ve heard my husband discussing that as a lead up to trying to impose Contractors in many varying forms into the Metropolitan areas that they are shifting quite a number of what they call the easier jobs, such as jump starting flat batteries etc to their supposed Battery Patrols. One needs to understand that these Battery Patrols are not actually employed by the NRMA. The NRMA has a 25% ownership of Car Electrics who employ these people as sub contractors with their own ABN numbers to do the work of fitting batteries etc for the NRMA in this state. These battery contractors run around in vehicle with NRMA plastered down the side as if they are employed as the Patrols are, by the NRMA. This is definately not the case.

3. Regarding the cost of jobs – I’ve spoken to my husband and he informs me that it is his understanding that at present the way the NRMA calculates the cost of a job in the Metropolitan area is that they divide the total cost of running the business by the number of jobs (this means that if the cost of running the business remains the same and the job numbers go down the cost of the job increases). Whereas the cost of the jobs done by Country Service Centres is negotiated by the NRMA when their contract becomes due, giving the NRMA the ability to screw these people into the ground where their poor employees who are then the Patrol officers who turn up to you in Country areas receive close to the basic wage.

4. The comment that my husband and other metropolitan Patrols only spend about 25% of their time actually working on breakdowns and the rest being spent either in idle time, or travelling is just a joke. How do you expect a Patrol to get to your car to work on it if they don’t have travel time? And it is hardly within the powers of either a Patrol or the NRMA to tell the Members to break down sequentially so that they have zero idle time.

5. My husband when working on Midnight shifts (which start after 10pm and finish prior to 6am) can travel vast distances across the metropolitan area as the number of Patrols working these hours are but a handful compared to their normal day and afternoon shifts. I believe that it is actually an OH & S issue in regards to my husband’s safety and security that he is allowed to come home in the early hours of the morning and is allowed to go to bed and be on call via the phone till the next breakdown occurs. It would seem rather ridiculous to have him sitting in the NRMA van on the side of the road anywhere for long periods when he could be at home in a safe environment awaiting his next job.

6. Yes it was a great job and I believe the turnover rate since Tony Stuart’s involvement in the NRMA has increased dramatically from what used to be a steady flow of retiring mature aged Patrol officers.

7. The pay – as my husband earns above the current “average” wage of all Patrolmen he feels a little hardly done by when he earnt less than $60,000 for the year ending June 30, 2003. When we hear that the wages were actually between $85,000 and $105,000 per annum, that means that my husband earnt $25,000 LESS than the LOWEST WAGE that the Patrols are apparently making. Maybe the NRMA would like to make up the difference in his pay whilst making claims that are as outrageous as this.

8. To understand the paid meal breaks and travel time home after a shift I believe that this is due to my husband working a continual rotating shift through day, afternoon and midnight shift which entitles him to have paid meal breaks. As to travelling from home, my husband has his starting point, our home address, this is where he stores the NRMA’s vehicle and tools and supplies the NRMA his meal room, toilet, and shower facilities which they cannot provide for him and other Patrols in the metropolitan area, at no cost to the NRMA. So unless once again we could have Members breaking down on our doorstep or the Patrols knowing where the first Member of the day on their shift is going to break down so they could make that their starting point, one would say this is a pretty fair and reasonable arrangement that the NRMA has with the Patrols.

9. The ability of the NRMA to change the Patrols rosters at the NRMA’s whim makes family life and being married to an NRMA Patrol Officer exceptionally difficult. If for instance my husband was to receive a phone call from the NRMA to say his next day off that we’d made arrangements for us as a family to do something was not going to occur – because of leave, sickness etc, I think you would have to agree that this would be unacceptable. Being a wife of an NRMA Patrol Officer means that you are basically married to the NRMA.

10. As to “some Patrols being exempt from working weekends”. I understand that these Patrols who are still working on what are now the old conditions which was part of the contract of employment when these Patrols started the job with the NRMA. They would work EVERY weekend bar none for the first 11 years and then be offered what was called a 6-4 roster. Then after reaching 15 years of employment they would be offered part weekends, these being either Friday, Saturday or Sunday, Monday as days off. These Patrols have missed out on seeing their children competing in sporting events, family outings, social events and the list goes on and on and on. The exemption from working Saturday and Sunday, as most normal people would have as days off anyway, is granted to the 10 longest serving Patrols who worked these conditions. Some of these Patrols I believe have worked for the NRMA in excess of 30 years, one would hardly say that they don’t deserve some recognition for their hard work and dedication to the NRMA, let alone what family and home life they gave up years ago. If you consider that between these 10 Patrols they have accrued some 300 years service to the NRMA, you would think that this is but a small compensation to these 10 Patrol officers out of a total Patrol force of 400 plus!

Under the current rotating roster which I believe the NRMA has had in place for a number of years which is called a “Team Roster” where on any given day 2 Teams work and 1 Team is on a day off, one third of the Patrols working these conditions are off each day of every weekend. Yet the NRMA is still trying to attack these 10 Patrol officers.

11. I cannot believe that the NRMA feel that the Union has control of their business. This is the most ludicrous statement and it is one that has been around for many years. Interestingly enough the only senior management member still left in the organisation that continues to be employed, (which blows me away), is yes, you guessed it, is Peter Steele!

I cannot comment on the Board side of your story but if Ross Turnbull had not stepped in to have the Patrols EA sorted out then I believe the Patrols and NRMA management would be in arbitration over this matter for a long, long time to come, at least well and truly into next year which would be a huge waste of Members money.

All I know as a Patrol Officer’s wife is that I along with all the other Patrol Officer’s wives have been concerned about my husband’s job security for the past 18 months. And I have been concerned that NRMA management have wanted to get rid of the entire Patrol workforce and install Contractors. My husband along with the other 400 odd Patrol Officers does a good job. He like his fellow Patrols look after the NRMA Members as he would like them to look after me if I was broken down on the side of the road. I can hardly see this happening if the NRMA was to introduce a total Contractor workforce where the person would be paid on a per job basis not allowing him sufficient time to do what is currently done for the Members on the side of the road.

The truth is that the NRMA have a workforce in the Patrols who are second to none. It says a lot if an organisation still has employees who have been there 30 years. I feel that the NRMA do not value their Patrols. I feel that they have absolutely no grasp on just how much value their Patrols give this business. It’s a bit like life really. If you have someone who is always there for you, no matter what, then surely you have to value that person and give something back. The Patrols do not expect the world, they just want to continue doing their job, helping people, doing an honest days work for an honest days pay. The conditions that the families of the Patrols put up with on a regular basis goes unnoticed by the NRMA. I would like to see Peter Steele or Tony Stuart do this job and still retain some semblance of a happy family life.

I for one, along with all other Patrol wives am grateful that the EA has finally got up. We can stop worrying for at least the next 3 years about where our next pay packet is coming from. We can also try to get back to being a family again.

Once again Thank You for having the ability to air the dirty laundry that needs to be brought to the general publics attention. Please keep up the great work as there is a lot of dirty washing yet…….

Mrs Patrolman