McDermot v Owners of SS Tintoretto

act to take over all Army Messes. As a consequence the Mess at Puckapunyal ceased to be run by the Department of Defence in February 1994. SERCO then commenced to run the Mess with its own staff. All staff at Puckapunyal were paid their normal rates of pay, including penalties, until 11 March 1994. From that date, catering attendants employed by the Department of Defence at Puckapunyal ceased to be paid penalty allowances. There were no longer any duties which required shift work. In the case of the applicants there was a reduction in compensation payments from 11 March 1994 because their compensation was thereafter based on salary applicable to their GSO 3 and GSO 2 levels respectively, but without shift penalty. As at 11 March 1994 there were approximately 140 positions affected at Puckapunyal, approximately 30 to 40 of which were catering employees. The vast majority of those catering employees accepted a redundancy offer. Some of those who took redundancy then became employees of SERCO, but others obtained unrelated work or left the workforce. For those who did not have many years of service it was better not to take the redundancy package. Those employees had a statutory entitlement to work on for between seven to thirteen months, depending on their length of employment before they were actually terminated and declared redundant. The evidence as to what happened to GSO 2s and GSO 3s who had been employed as catering staff and who stayed on rather than take the redundancy offer was described in the following terms by the Administration Manager for Puckapunyal, Mr Bailey: One of the objectives of the Commercial Support Program literally wiped out all of those positions within Puckapunyal, we had no equivalent positions into which we could place them, effectively, so they were left with a couple of alternatives. One, was to transfer lower down - to accept a downgrade into a lower position - which some did. One was to re-train them - which we did - so that they could seek alternative employment and a different classification - which some did. And others, through re-training efforts, were promoted to higher level GSO positions. Mr Bailey produced a schedule showing the earnings of a number of catering attendants and occupiers of other positions who had remained employed by the Department of Defence after 11 March 1994. That schedule is as follows: Employee A - GSO2 - Catering Attendant When this employee ceased work in a mess in March 94 and was then redundant, he was retrained and in December 94, through his own efforts, promoted on merit to a GSO3 Storeman position. Pay Day Pay Day 1-3-94 24-3-94 $774.40 wages $774.40 wages $331.88 penalties no penalties Employee B - GSO2 - Catering Attendant When the mess closed in March 94 and this employee was then redundant she was retrained until August 94. She was then promoted on merit to a clerical position (Administrative Service Officer Grade 2) in Darwin. Pay Day Pay Day 24-2-94 10-3-94 $823.74 wages $823.74 wages $251.38 penalties no penalties Employee C - GSO2 - Catering Attendant When the mess closed in March 94 and this employee was redundant he was retrained and ultimately promoted on merit to a clerical position (Administrative Service Officer Grade 2) in January 95 at Puckapunyal.