The union representing Shoalhaven City Council staff is urging the council to provide information to members. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
There have been “consistent rumours” in recent weeks over potential job losses at a South Coast council, a union for council staff claims.
At a meeting in early June, Shoalhaven City Council (SCC) received proposals on how to improve its books.
According to the meeting agenda, the Financial Review Panel had recommended amending the 2025/2026 Delivery Program and Operational Plan in several ways.
One of the proposals was for SCC to limit employee costs to 20 per cent more than what other comparative councils are to pay by 2026/27, which councillors voted to adopt. It currently spends about 30 per cent above the others.
During the meeting, SCC staff said further work would be needed to identify what the next steps would be (including on any job losses), as different councils recorded that information in varying ways.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think any of us are going to be able to answer … the number or what that means at this point,” a staff member said of the proposal.
“That’s a body of work that will need to be undertaken over the next financial year to fully evaluate what that looks like and what that means for us in the 26/27 year budget.”
Stuart Geddes from the southern region branch of the United Services Union, which represents council employees, said the decision was a “hard quota” on staff numbers.
He also claimed SCC hadn’t been transparent with its staff about what options they were considering.
Both junior and senior staff “don’t know what the future’s going to look like”, he said, alleging that “consistent rumours” were affecting morale among workers.
“There hasn’t been significant consultation with staff … A lot of the staff are concerned [they’re going to lose their jobs].”
He said there were steps SCC could take before capping employment costs and called on councillors to be clear about potential job losses.
“You should be doing reviews before cutting jobs,” he said.
“Really, local government in regional areas are often one, if not the largest, employers … if you are going to start cutting good, secure jobs, [that] does have consequences on where these people are going to work.”
An SCC spokesperson told Region the council would have a better idea of how it was faring financially in the coming months.
“Comparable information for all NSW councils will be available after 31 October 2025,” they said.
“Once this information is available council will be able to compare how our current employee costs compare to the OLG Group 5 average [of similar councils].”
During the recent council meeting, councillors Jemma Tribe, Matthew Norris, Gillian Boyd, Natalee Johnston and Ben Krikstolaitis voted against the proposal.
