Not all public sector employers contravene workplace laws.  Most employers work towards having cohesive work places and don't bully, harass and unfairly dismiss their workers.  Nevertheless, there are toxic workplaces who do break workplace laws.

 

When private sector employers break workplace laws the cost of their transgressions is supported by the business owners and/or shareholders. So there is a need for them to get their house in order and `fix' the problem. The public sector on the other hand passes on liabilities to the taxpayer and individual perpetrators of workplace bullying, unfair work practices and unfair dismissals are rarely held accountable if there is a toxic work culture.

 

One of the reasons why public sector employers are not held to account when they contravene work place laws is because there is no transparent financial data on how much was spent by the employer (taxpayer) on contraventions of workplace laws and poor management decisions in relation to their HR practices.  This is because the overall cost for contraventions of workplace laws are absorbed in budgets as Operational or HR/Staffing costs.  For example, it is not likely that a publicly funded agency would readily advise what component of the organization's  litigation and settlement budget was spent on contraventions of workplace laws.

 

This lack of transparency creates the perfect storm as government spending for the human resource operations within the public sector, also supports contraventions of its own workplace laws  (the Fair Work Act 2009, Health and Safety Act 2011) and the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. This leads to wasteful government spending. For more information read the section on how the Lack of transparency undermines government policies

 

Under the current circumstances, the only way in which public sector employers can be held accountable is when individual workers report the wasteful spending  of taxpayer funds

 

To better understand the cost related to contraventions on the Australian taxpayer, click here.

 

Click here to better understand how you can report wasteful spending.

 

Click here to know more about toxic workplaces

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Click here to know more about workplace bullying

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