Rotorua Lakes Council staff working on garden beds in the CBD. Photo / NZME
Rotorua Lakes Council staff working on garden beds in the CBD. Photo / NZME
Rotorua Lakes Council is outsourcing some traffic management duties after a union instructed its council-worker members to stop carrying out the work, citing safety risks.
The directive affects workers in the council’s works department, who previously managed traffic while undertaking tasks such as garden bed maintenance.
Staff previously carried outthe work with “appropriate training” but due to “union direction”, this was no longer the case, according to a report presented to the council’s Infrastructure and Environment Committee earlier this month.
The workers involved belong to the Amalgamated Workers Union of New Zealand and have not been conducting traffic management as part of their responsibilities since July 1.
They are currently “party to the bargaining process” and it would be a breach of “good faith” to add any further comment at this time.
Rotorua Lakes Council’s community experience group manager Alex Wilson said they were still in negotiations and it would “not be appropriate” to make further comment.
This included questions over the reasoning for the union direction and the cost to cover traffic management responsibilities.
However, the topic was debated by the council earlier this month, with Wilson saying traffic management training “was appropriate” but the union deemed the risk profile as one “they were not willing to take” for members.
The activity that led to the union direction was confirmed to be garden bed work while also operating traffic management.
The union informed the council that staff were “put at too much risk” of doing both roles as part of their duties, according to Wilson.
Councillor Conan O’Brien queried the power of unions to delegate work and the appropriateness of training to perform both garden bed and traffic management roles.
Rotorua Lakes Council chief executive Andrew Moraes. Photo / Andrew Warner
“We assign work to staff, not the union,” said council chief executive Andrew Moraes.
“I want to be very clear,” he said. “We are confident the training we provided our staff is sufficient to keep them safe in the performance of their duties.”
He confirmed the “disagreement” between the two parties has caused a re-evaluation of how to deliver the service. This report would be ready for the next council, following October’s local body elections.
No accident triggered the union direction, the meeting heard. However, the council later told Local Democracy Reporting there had been 37 recorded “near-miss incidents” since November, nearly one a week.
These included 30 reports of a vehicle hitting a traffic cone, three vehicle-to-vehicle collisions and one report each of a cyclist striking a cone, a sign hitting a vehicle, vehicle breakdown and a vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road.
The council's works department took on InfraCore responsibilities this year. Photo / Laura Smith
Workers from former council-controlled organisation InfraCore took strike action in 2024 over low pay.
InfraCore was rolled back into council control in November 2024 as part of the works department, with staff transfers completed in February.
The reintroduction cut the monthly operating deficit by $147,000 and reduced loss to $1 million, down from an expected $3.85m.
The council said it would continue outsourcing traffic management responsibilities of this work while discussions continued with the union.
This story has been updated to reflect that the Amalgamated Workers Union of New Zealand says it did not confirm giving a directive to members to not work.
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
