The whole ODT article hasn't a word about WHY they are striking. Perhaps this is the achievement of April Strategy - see Zzhuzhing up the culture, first SDHB now OU - "improving the culture". By decreasing visibility? I had to find the reason at Stuff.co.nz
....APEX Southland MIT delegate Shahn Smith said the removal of backpay and
higher wages for more advanced positions were the two issues that were
not resolved in last round of negotiations.
Those who work in CT or MRI or nuclear medicine have a more
stressful job than someone working on X-rays and under negotiations they
are not being rewarded for the larger workload, Smith said....
I'd have picked the stream of media revelations about nastiness, muddles and XOS egos damaging all the hard-working people within a clapped-out workplace running on the smell of an oily rag got a few people to pull their heads in and fingers out.
Perhaps a few bum-kickings took place. Them's my thinks.
Yet possibly it was due to a squad of imported consultants improving the culture.
Me, if I wanted some culture improved I'd look at SDHB and go, "Nah, I want heaps more improvement than that for the money." But then, I'm looking at it from the point of view of someone spending their own money.
The
University of Otago has engaged a UK-based consultancy firm previously
hired by the Southern District Health Board in a bid to improve its
culture.
odt.co.nz
The University of Otago has engaged a UK-based consultancy firm
previously hired by the Southern District Health Board in a bid to
improve its culture. April Strategy is involved in an exercise branded "Shaping Our
Culture, Together - He Waka Kotuia", led by the university's HR
department.... ...[T]he Tertiary Education Union (TEU) has said the mood at the
university is at "a low ebb" following that review and others, with both
academic and general staff worried about job security.... ...TEU Dunedin organiser Phil Edwards said staff had experienced a period of "constant change and disruption" in recent years. A TEU survey had found the support services review had entailed
"three years of considerable uncertainty about the future ... and a
significant loss of organisational knowledge caused by redundancies,
redeployments and workload and workflow changes". Other university reviews in recent years have involved humanities,
physical education, human nutrition and the centre for material science
and technology, and the current review into the Department of Marine
Sciences. https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/campus/university-of-otago/university-hires-uk-firm-improve-culture
Wouldn't the culture be more effectively enhanced by not continuously
reducing education provided, by not restructuring services such that the most
effective experienced support staff were replaced by less experienced
appointed to roles above their competence level?
Is hiring a firm to improve the culture, after mishandling the basics of respect
for people and education brought the mood to "a low ebb", not so much
a problem-solver as a mission to put lipstick on a pig?
Steve
Thompson is the Chair of both Aurora Energy and it's South Canterbury
counterpart Alpine Energy. It's becoming clearer to me by the day that
his management style has produced the same results for both sets of
ratepayers - total disaster.
Read this piece and the attached
report. It seems to me that this man has the reverse Midas touch -
everything he touches turns to crap. FIFTY PERCENT lopped off the value
of Alpine in just a couple of years.
Could this be the reason
that the Office of the Auditor General recently spent a month and a
half in the Alpine offices? I hope the people of Timaru are smarter than
the people of Dunedin when it comes to wrenching back control of their
floundering power company.
This could have massive consequences for Aurora and Dunefin. What is the
true "fair value" of the company? One thing is for certain, no one at
the DCC has a clue.
Heavily redacted Alpine Energy valuation report 'almost meaningless'
Matthew Littlewood, Oct 25 2019, Stuff.co.nz https://tinyurl.com/y52n3xqq
See what he means?
Tbere are numerous pages of this kind of thing so for simplicity the text
has been omitted leaving only a representative sample of redactions.
Admire this as creative use of bold stripe motif,
or make up your own fragments to fill in the blanks.
You could even go to the link and see the redacted pages,
just for the lols.
A
report which provided part of the basis for the proposed sale of lines
company Alpine Energy has finally been released - almost a year after it
was requested - but most of the information it contains has been
blacked out.
The report was commissioned by EY (formerly Ernst Young) for Timaru
District Holdings Ltd - the Timaru District Council's holdings company
- which owns a 47.5 per cent share of Alpine Energy.
The other shareholders are Lines Trust South Canterbury (40 per cent),
Waimate District Council (7.54 per cent) and Mackenzie District Council
(4.96 per cent).
Business commentator Rod Oram says the heavily redacted EY report is "almost meaningless".
The EY report says "our assessment of the Fair Value of 100 per cent of
the equity in Alpine Energy Ltd lies in the range of $182.4m to $206.1m
with a mid-point of $194.1m".
In 2017, Deloittes valued Alpine Energy at $362m-$423m.
Joseph Kelly/Supplied
Economist Shamubeel Eaqub says the extent of the redactions of the EY report were "farcical".
However, the EY report is so heavily redacted that it does not give
much of an indication as to why there is such a big discrepancy in the
values.
Stuff
asked the Timaru District Council for a copy of the report under the
Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA) in
November 2018 - a request which was initially declined by the council at
the request of Alpine Energy.
Stuff
then complained to the Ombudsman's office in December 2018 arguing that
the information was in the public interest, as the company was publicly
owned. This week a heavily redacted version of the report was finally
released.
Supplied
Newsroom journalist Bernard Hickey says 'commercial sensitivity' is often invoked for political means.
Alpine Energy chief executive Andrew Tombs would not be drawn into what
was blacked out, other than to say it was "commercially sensitive"
information.
When approached for further comment, he said he had "nothing else to add".
In a letter to Stuff,
released this week, council chief executive Bede Carran explained that
the EY report was originally withheld "at the request of Alpine Energy".
"We have been liaising with the officials from the Ombudsman's Office
on the matter, and have also consulted with Alpine Energy," the letter
says.
"We are comfortable that the attached redacted version balances the
interests of disclosure of information with protecting the legitimate
commercial interests of Alpine Energy."
However, business commentator Rod Oram says the heavy redactions "make the report meaningless."
"It's difficult to tell what is genuinely 'commercially sensitive' and
what isn't, because the report is so heavily blacked out," Oram said.
Last year, the Timaru District Council proposed to sell down TDHL's
47.5 per cent share in lines company Alpine Energy, but this was
abandoned after a major public backlash, with hundreds of submissions
against it.
"The council says the business is no longer up for sale. Even if it
was, potential buyers would do their own valuation anyway, so to invoke
commercial sensitivity is a bit of a stretch," Oram said.
Oram said the appendices of the EY report, which were not redacted,
listed a series of 'comparable companies' and 'comparable transactions'.
These, though, would have been of little if any use to the council or
TDHL.
"EY are not comparing apples with apples. They're mentioning huge
international electricity companies alongside smaller lines companies.
"Likewise, their comparisons of New Zealand lines company transactions
range from $2.7m to $2.7billion in value, with a wide range of price to
earnings multiples across those acquisitions. What the council got out
of the report is really hard to determine."
Economist Shamubeel Eaqub said the extent of redaction was "farcical - but common in my experience"
"It speaks to some bigger issues in terms of how council staff appear
not to understand where the boundaries are between public interest and
confidentiality," Eaqub said.
Newsroom journalist Bernard Hickey said the level of redaction signalled that the LGOIMA was "broken".
"The information shouldn't be secret but commercial confidentiality is often used and abused for political ends," Hickey said.
