20th September 2011
Crs Lipshutz/Hyams
In accordance with the O’Neill Recommendation (a) to further protect the Health and Safety of staff in City Management, Cr. Penhalluriack’s access to this work area be suspended and the Director of Community Services be authorised to send the attachment letter to Cr. Penhalluriack (Attachment B).
DIVISION
Cr Esakoff called for a Division on the voting of the Motion
FOR AGAINST
Cr Esakoff Cr Penhalluriack
Cr Hyams Cr Forge
Cr Lipshutz Cr Magee
Cr Tang Cr Pilling
Cr Lobo
On the basis of the Division the Chairperson declared the Motion LOST.
Glen Eira Debates 
April 19, 2012 at 11:44 AM
The motion got knocked on its head but I seem to remember hearing or reading somewhere that in the end Penhalluriack was barred from his workplace. That’s bullying for sure and if it got defeated in September then how did it get back on the agenda and how did it get through. Burke, Newton and the gang must have been working overtime on that one.
April 19, 2012 at 12:26 PM
Good to see the gang get rolled. It should happen every single time.
April 19, 2012 at 1:25 PM
I’ve been looking at the Equal Opportunity Act and there are some sections which I think are relevant to what’s happened here.
73. Discrimination by councillors
A councillor of a municipal council must not, in the performance of his or her
public functions, discriminate against-
(a) another councillor of that council
I would definitely like to see this principle tested in court, plus that a Special Committee was set up which excluded Penhalluriack.
April 19, 2012 at 4:01 PM
20 September is at least 2 to 3 months after the hired gun, O’Neil, finished her report. Couldn’t have been very convincing leaving Penhalluriack out of it, if 4 other councillors voted against this.
April 19, 2012 at 8:17 PM
This blog is a.disgrace.The matter quoted happened over 6 months ago. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then and if you read the recent Ombudsmans Report then those Councillor’s who aided Frank have helped create a monster.We await VCAT’s decision.
April 19, 2012 at 9:01 PM
Trouble with you Anon is that you’ve got no appreciation of history and the behind the scenes contortions that all go towards setting the stage for the grand finale. Here we’ve got the culprits fully exposed and defeated. But heck, did they give up? No! Did Newton call it quits? No! This little setback must have stirred them on to greater efforts. I’ll give you the monster bit – but it’s not Frank – it’s your buddies sitting in the admin offices wasting our money with their fruitless lynch parties. Yeah – let’s get to vcat. Can’t wait for the full demise of the gang and Newton.
April 19, 2012 at 8:57 PM
Here are some examples of bullying behaviours that can be extracted from the Worksafe website. It does seem very surprising that Council has not involved Worksafe in any investigation of recent allegations concerning bullying.
* Unjustified criticism or complaints.
* Deliberately excluding someone from workplace activities.
* Deliberately denying access to information or other resources.
* Withholding information that is vital for effective work performance.
* Being told at a meeting to stop asking questions.
* Not being included in regular meetings to which they were previously invited.
* Having the CEO look out the window and ignore them when they spoke to him or her during meetings.
* Finding out that they were no longer being invited to work social functions.
* A collective attack, often made on an over-achiever, who is perceived for whatever reason to be a threat to an organisation.
* Behaviours, acts or situations such as sarcasm, threats, verbal abuse, punitive behaviour.
* Ganging-up and isolation which has the effect of intimidating, humiliating or psychologically terrorising individual workers or groups of workers.
Some other relevant snippets:
* Workplace bullying is repeated, unreasonable behaviour directed towards an employee, or group of employees, that creates a risk to health and safety. [Leading to hospitalization?]
* “Unreasonable behaviour” means behaviour that a reasonable person, having regard to all the circumstances, would expect to victimise.
* Bullying can be directed in a range of ways in a workplace: downwards (from supervisors or managers to workers), sideways (between workers or co-workers) and upwards (from workers to supervisors or managers).
What isn’t bullying:
* Setting performance goals, standards and deadlines
* Informing a worker about unsatisfactory work performance
* Performance management processes
April 20, 2012 at 11:48 AM
WorkSafe can’t investigate actions of Councillors under s144 of the OHS Act if Council has taken steps to comply with the Act. This is because Councillors (as officers) can only be guilty if Council itself breached the act. If Council takes reasonably practicable steps (talking to a councillor, suggesting mediation) then they have complied. As a result WorkSafe won’t intervene.
It will be even more difficult under harmonised OHS legislation as councillors cannot be liable under that act at all.
April 20, 2012 at 3:34 PM
I was expecting this to be covered by s73 and s75, such that if any of the parties attempting to resolve the issue had asked Worksafe, then an Inspector would have been obliged to enquire into the issue.