[Peetwo]

The Harfwit gets grilled over ASA toxic culture - 

Yesterday Harfwit appeared before the RRAT committee, the following was the basic ToR and tabled documents:

 

Oversight of Airservices Australia

Background Information

• In May 2020, Airservices released the report A Review of Culture at Airservices Australia, following a broad and independent review of the workplace culture undertaken by Elizabeth Broderick & Co. (PDF)
  

• Correspondence to Senator Susan McDonald from Mr Jason Harfield, Cheif Executive Officer of Airservices Australia. Received by the secretariat on 21 August 2020. (PDF)
  

Public Hearing

• Friday 28 August 2020, Parliament House, Canberra - Program (PDF)
  

  

To view the hearing click HERE and once the Hansard is published I will put up.

It took a while(??) but finally the Hansard Transcript is out - see HERE. 

 An extract of interest and intrigue...

CHAIR: That's fine. Thanks, Senator Antic. I have some questions. I have been looking at Elizabeth Broderick's report and the progress update. I assume that, given the amount of work you've done in this space, you're conducting surveys of the workforce to understand their engagement with this process and how they feel it's going?

Mr Harfield: One of the changes that we've also started to introduce is that we will be doing rolling surveys with the organisation on a regular basis. We used to do a quite extensive employee opinion survey once every two years, with a pulse in the interim year. We are now moving to do this on a continued rolling basis rather than on an annual basis, for that very reason.

CHAIR: That's very good. I want to ask you about the impact that COVID has had on the organisation. How are you going with maintaining your staffing levels? Has government funding assisted you in that?

Mr Harfield: Yes. If I could step you through it, it was an organisation that was set up to be fully funded by industry charges. With the reduction in air traffic that has occurred, not only have we seen a 90 per cent reduction in air traffic; we've seen a comparable reduction in our revenue as well. What the government assistance and funding that we have been provided with has assisted us in doing is—we need to work over three time horizons. Not only are we dealing with the traffic that is still there and operating today; we have to operate and provide our services whether there is one aircraft flying or whether there are a thousand aircraft flying. We don't have the ability to determine that we are only going to service Sydney to Melbourne, for example. We still have to continue to provide those services over 11 per cent of the earth's airspace. We also have to be in a position to ensure that when the industry does start to recover we're there and able to manage that increase, because if we are not in that space and we hamper that recovery then it will have a flow-on impact on what's going on. We also need to start repositioning the organisation over time to what I would call the new normal, where all our predictions et cetera, with the changing shape of the industry, are that, in a few years time, post COVID, we will be probably at 80 per cent of what we were. The government assistance, which we are grateful for, has allowed us to do this in a very measured and controlled way so that we can balance these issues in an environment that is changing on a monthly basis. It's allowed us to manage this and retune our operations to move into what we call a COVID-safe environment, so that, if we have an infection, for example, we are able to minimise the flow-on effect so that we can continue providing services while at the same time ensure the health and wellbeing of our staff.

CHAIR: Alright. So you've not had any job losses?

Mr Harfield: No.

CHAIR: Is Airservices responsible for monitoring parked aircraft? Mr Harfield: No, in the sense that that's the airline and the airport. We would be there to deal with it, if they were being moved around—that is, controlling from an air-traffic perspective—and potentially turning out if there's an incident involving that parked aircraft. CHAIR: What are the risks with aircraft parked up? Are they as dangerous as some people claim?

Mr Harfield: From our perspective, the risk profile depends on the advice we are given from and through our dialogue with the airline as well as the airport. The reason I say that is that how they configure and how they do the parking of the aircraft would define what our knowledge is. It depends on how the airline decides, and what procedures they put in, to put the aircraft into storage. Have I explained myself? I don't know what the risk is unless the airlines have advised us, 'This is the profile of what the parking is,' and we'd assess the risk from there.

CHAIR: I assume that you're talking to the airlines and the airports on an ongoing basis on these matters?

Mr Harfield: Absolutely.

CHAIR: Are you planning on laying off staff in the future? Mr Harfield: The reason for the hesitation is that, unfortunately, I can't predict what the future holds at this moment in time. We do know that we have to be a different organisation, in the sense that we are sustained and funded by industry and how we are sustainable in that way, going forward, in a different operating environment. We need to balance that against providing services today. The issue is that we are continuing to work through it. I can't rule anything in or out, but there are no definitive plans at this stage.

CHAIR: Is this the first time that Airservices has received government assistance? It seems a very novel situation—

Mr Harfield: Sorry; I missed the last part, unfortunately.

CHAIR: I was just asking if this was the first time that you'd received government assistance since the organisation was established?

Mr Harfield: I don't know. I can't recall the early days, but I'll correct the record. I'll go back and check, but this is the first time that we've received this level of assistance, because we've been set up to be totally funded by industry and make a return, and we pay a dividend back to government each year. We're a tax-paying entity as well. CHAIR: You receive a fee from airlines for your operations.

Mr Harfield: Yes.

CHAIR: What do you expect the future holds? Do you expect the domestic airline industry to return to some proportion of normality in the next 12 months? What are you forecasting?

Mr Harfield: At the moment, from the forecasting that we use, we were—I'll call it three months ago—basing it on seeing around 80 per cent domestic recovery by about Christmas time. Now we've seen that slide out to be probably the middle of next year; that's where we would see that. Internationally, where we were originally seeing a recovery to around 80 per cent by mid to late next year, we're seeing that it will probably take another couple of years to get back to those levels. Our planning that we have done, which is conservative, is that we will not return to about 80 per cent of our revenue, which doesn't directly equate to activity but is an approximation of it, until around the end of 2021 or into 2022-23. It will probably take until then before we get back to those levels.

Via the other Aunty - 

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Airservices Australia staff sacked for bullying and harassment amid warnings of cultural problems

Exclusive by defence correspondent Andrew Greene



A review of the company in May found it had unacceptable levels of bullying and sexual harrassment.(Reuters: Tim Wimborne)

Air traffic controllers have been dismissed from the agency that controls Australian aviation, amid a crackdown on bullying and harassment, but insiders warn poor behaviour by senior managers continues to be covered up.

Key points:

• Five employees, including controllers, have been sacked
  
• Current and former staff say senior management who behave badly are escaping punishment
  
• They say victims are signing non-disclosure agreements once they reach a settlement
  
• Airservices Australia has launched 36 investigations into possible breaches of its workplace Code of Conduct since an inquiry earlier this year revealed deep cultural problems within the organisation.
  

In May, a review by former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick found Airservices Australia had unacceptable levels of bullying and sexual harassment, posing a threat to workers' psychological safety.

The ABC can reveal five employees, including air traffic controllers, have since left the troubled organisation following complaints raised by staff after the release of the Broderick report.

In a statement, Airservices Australia said it held a zero-tolerance approach to breaches of its staff code of conduct.

"Our staff are required to strictly comply with the code of conduct, which explicitly prohibits all forms of bullying and harassment," a spokesperson said.

"Breaches of the code of conduct may result in disciplinary action, including dismissal."

Current and former staff who spoke to the ABC on the condition of anonymity acknowledged the recent crackdown had removed some troublemakers, but claim senior managers who had behaved badly were still escaping punishment.



The air traffic control tower at Cairns Airport, as seen from the ground.

Airservices Australia has been the subject of two reviews into workplace culture.(ABC Far North: Mark Rigby)
A Sydney-based worker said rumours persisted inside the agency that some members of the management team exchange pornographic images across the country through a shared computer drive known as the "P-drive".

Another Airservices Australia employee, who recently left the organisation, said on several occasions confidential settlements had been reached with victims who had been harassed or bullied by bosses.

"The use of non-disclosure agreements ensures that the bosses can cover up bad behaviour and no-one gets to know about it," the woman said.

Labor senator Tony Sheldon, a former Secretary of the NSW Transport Workers' Union, said it would be disturbing if Airservices Australia was insisting on non-disclosure agreements being signed.

"That really goes to the heart of protecting people in leadership rather than dealing with a workplace culture that is toxic," he said.

"Airservices Australia has already been the subject of two extensive reviews into workplace culture, these new allegations suggest they may not have learnt anything from those reviews."

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TICK TOCK goes the Harfwit play school clock...

MTF...P2