Job outsourcing ditched

The City received a proposal from IT and business process service provider Civica to take on 20 of the City’s existing staff and then ‘lease’ those staff back to the local government at a discount.

But the City of Cockburn’s chief executive Stephen Cain, urged the City of Kwinana to delay consideration of the proposal to avoid complicating a potential amalgamation.

Civica proposed a separately located ‘Centre of Excellance’ (COE) in Kwinana, and wanted to lease Kwinana’s staff in rates, payroll, accounts payable, customer services, IT support and HR records back to the City at a discount of 7.5 per cent.

The City would also receive 2.5 per cent of turnover from new business acquired by the COE.

The reason for the discount is Civica’s business model of wishing to secure (or ‘buy’) a business profile in Western Australia outside of its present standard operations, which are based largely in the the United States and the United Kingdom.

Staff would have continued to be paid their present rates, have the same contracted conditions, and would also receive a bonus for moving to Civica.

Staff who did not wish to be employed by Civica would not be forced to.

But Mr Cain said the outsourcing plan would create a ‘barrier’ for Cockburn council and formally asked that the City of Kwinana not enter a contract with Civica at this time.

At Wednesday’s ordinary meeting of council, Kwinana Mayor Carol Adams, Cr Ruth Alexander and Cr Sherilyn Wood voted against canning the project, but the majority of councillors voted to cease negotiations with Civica completely.