1) Professional Service Contractors or Skill Hire staff have absolutely no “delegated authority”. By that I mean we are not entitled to approve anything which might commit the Government Agency to financial liability; we can’t sit on OH&S committees, Selection Panels, or to allow ourselves to be seen as representing the work of the Government Agency in any respect. (This is scratching the surface of the restrictions, I might add.)
2) Following on from 1), above, our status as ‘temporary staff’ means other rights are consequently reduced. I heard the other day the annual Staff Awards nominations can’t include nominations for staff in our ‘temporary’ category. A year or two back this resulted in a Team recommendation where the Team was composed of a mixture of true staff and skill hire being conveniently edited so only part of the team received recognition. A sort of institutional employment apartheid.
3) Following from 2) was the comical affair where a professional engineer – who was/is a skill hire member of staff – was nominated for and ‘accidentally’ received an award. There was consequent huge institutional embarrassment because checks were not made during the nomination vetting process. Embarrassment? I suspect it’s because the Government Agency don’t wish to admit relying on up to an eighth of its staff as being from outside the Agency.
4) Contradicting 1), we have a corporate dress code where temporary staff have to be issued personal protective equipment with the Governmental logo on. Cynically thinking, “We can’t bear to be seen to rely on skill hire people so much we feel we need to hide the fact by dressing them as if they were staff”.
5) OK. Done bitching.
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